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The top two executives of bankrupt Chinese conglomerate HNA Group, which once owned 25% of Hilton, have been arrested and “placed under compulsory measures,” according to Chinese business media outlet Mingtiandi.

HNA Group Chairman Chen Feng and CEO Tan Xiangdong, also known as Adam Tan, "have been detained for suspected crimes," Mingtiandi reports, and a reorganization plan has been announced that would split HNA into four new business units and “wipe out the company’s existing shareholders, including the now former management team.”

The Haikou, China-based firm, which declared bankruptcy in January, now is majority owned by Chinese-government entity Hainan Traffic Administration Holding. The report said that “should [the firm] be able to successfully emerge from bankruptcy, it would operate as four independent units focused on aviation, airport operations, finance and commerce.”

When guests returned to hotels during last spring and summer, they tended to stay for longer and in larger groups, which in turn placed additional pressure on housekeeping staff, already charged with keeping customers safe from COVID-19, writes Hotel News Now contributor Laura Koss-Feder.

Ashley Manley, director of sales for Fairfield by Marriott San Diego North/San Marcos in San Marcos, California, said she has "definitely witnessed a change in guest behavior when it comes to linen use and how frequently towels are abused beyond recovery.”

Gabriel Ibarra Macías, director of sales and marketing at Mexico Grand Hotels, said the majority of his properties' guests are family groups or adult groups traveling together, with a resultant increase in the cost per room in terms of towels, linens, water and housekeeping time consumption.

Responding to continued problems in delivering available fuel to gasoline stations, the United Kingdom government is not ruling out the possibility of deploying approximately 150 army staff to help out, according to the BBC.

The government is blaming panic buyers, who, in turn, are blaming the media for sensationalist headlines that they say impart a sense of urgency. Motoring organization RAC said the price of a liter of unleaded petrol has risen by a penny since Sept. 24 to an eight-year high. The government also stated that the situation appears to be settling down as most cars now have full tanks.

Ireland-based recruitment software company Occupop said that its study into hotel and hospitality hiring across the U.K. and Ireland reveals that of all jobs in the sectors advertised only 30% are filled, largely due to a lack of confidence in the sector and the sector’s lack of career prospects.

The report said there is a 46% increase in job vacancy advertisements and 190,000 open positions, and while hiring in the sector has risen by more than 60% in 2021, hotel, restaurant and bar firms face increasing difficulty staffing. Michael Caines, executive chef at hotel Lympstone Manor as well as at two additional restaurants, said in the report “a lot of people feel very concerned about leaving a job where they qualify for furlough to take the new job where they wouldn’t qualify for furlough if there was another lockdown.”

Notable investors running such entities as sovereign wealth funds and superannuation and pension funds for the second year in a row say that an increase in interest rates poses the highest risk to financial market stability, more so than another pandemic, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute.

In an August survey published on Sept. 27, the institute said global asset owners were worried about indications from the U.S. Federal Reserve that interest rates might rise at the beginning of 2022, with three additional increases in 2023. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said there is a growing case to raise interest rates, according to Reuters.

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