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    British Tourists Return to Portugal, Unleashed but (Mostly) Masked

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    Sorely in need of sun and a change of scene, British travelers returned to the newly “green-listed” country and were met by relief, exasperation — and hardly anyone.After enduring a winter of strict lockdown, and a spring that saw a gradual reopening but lousy weather to spend it in, the first British tourists to Portugal since the country was “green-listed” for quarantine-free travel were elated by the thrill of escape, even if their trips were not quite as carefree as in past summers. “We just wanted to go anywhere that wasn’t London, basically,” said the singer and songwriter Celeste Waite, 27, as she climbed a hilly street in Lisbon’s Alfama district last Saturday with Sonny Hall, 22, a model and poet.“It’s been nice finally getting back to normal,” said Karen Kaur, 35, of Kent, England, after she and Jay Singh, 38, downed shots of ginjinha, a cherry liqueur, from a street vendor in Praça da Figueira, a large square in the city’s center. But British travelers expecting a kind of pre-pandemic travel experience found something different in Lisbon during the first weekend it reopened to them. Though the Portuguese capital still offered its signature food, museums, picturesque vistas and attractions, stringent mask rules and curfews reminded visitors this would not be an unfettered escape. The opening weekend for Britons offered a preview of what a broader return to international travel may look like for others, including vaccinated Americans when they are welcomed to Europe this summer: A mixture of joy, relief, and at times awkward interactions as cultures converge after a year of disparate pandemic experiences. Tourists soak up the sun in Cascais, a coastal resort town near Portugal’s capital of Lisbon. Before the pandemic, Britons were one of the town’s top tourist markets.Daniel Rodrigues for The New York TimesPortugal has long been among Britain’s favorite tourist destinations, with scenic city escapes in Lisbon and Porto, and beachside restaurants and hotels catering to British tourists in the coastal resort town of Cascais and the Algarve, known for its alluring beaches, all within a three-hour flight. More than 2.1 million people visited from Britain in 2019, the most from any country except Spain, according to Turismo de Portugal, the national tourist board.Now, Portugal is one of Britain’s only tourist destinations. Earlier in May, Britain included Portugal on its “green list” of 12 countries and territories that residents could travel to from May 17 without quarantining for up to 10 days upon return. Most other green-listed places are either not accepting tourists or are not major destinations.A tourist passing the Casa de Santa Maria in Cascais. Britain added Portugal to its “green list,” which allowed its residents to travel there without quarantining from May 17.Daniel Rodrigues for The New York TimesPrices for flights to Portugal spiked after the announcement. But flying now means accepting expensive, and, at times, confusing extra steps, highlighting the tentative nature of international travel’s reopening. Tourists need to fill out multiple forms and submit a negative PCR test taken less than 72 hours before the flight. Before returning to Britain, they must take another test within 72 hours of their flight, and prove they have booked a third test to be taken on their second day back in Britain. The tests add up to hundreds of dollars per person, for many people exceeding the cost of the flight. Some tourists on a British Airways flight from London last Saturday said the extra steps were a pain, but they needed to get out of Britain after a difficult winter. From December to late March, the country experienced one of the world’s strictest and longest nationwide lockdowns, with socializing permitted only through walks in the cold with one other person. Pubs and restaurants didn’t open for outdoor dining until mid-April, and overnight travel within the country wasn’t permitted until last week.“No one else is going, so I’ve been rubbing it in with my friends,” said Anna De Pascalis, 23, before boarding a flight to Lisbon with her mother, Julie De Pascalis. “Everyone’s pretty jealous.” After a winter of rising coronavirus cases, Portugal has been down to a few hundred cases and single-digit deaths per day since late March. But there is a disparity in inoculations against Covid-19: About 36 percent of Portuguese people have received at least one dose of a vaccine, compared to about 57 percent of those from the United Kingdom.Tourists enjoying the view from São Jorge Castle, a popular attraction in Lisbon. A mere trickle of tourists have returned to Portugal so far compared to the hordes before the pandemic.Ana Brigida for The New York TimesSilvia Olivença, the owner of the food tour company Oh! My Cod in Lisbon, said being indoors with unmasked tourists while eating does not worry her, though she’s heard concerns from other Portuguese people that the return of foreigners could threaten Portugal’s low case numbers, despite tourists testing negative before they can fly.“You have people thinking about it, of course,” she said. But, she added: “I think people in general are quite happy to see the tourism come back.”One month ago, she would run maybe one tour per week. Now it’s up to 10 per week, with about 70 percent of her bookings from Britain, she said. In addition to British tourists, Portugal has also welcomed back visitors from the European Union. For Sara Guerreiro, who owns a ceramics shop in the Feira da Ladra flea market in the winding Alfama district, last Saturday was more of a tease of normality. Looking outside her shop, she saw maybe 10 percent of the pre-pandemic foot traffic through the twice-weekly market, which sells miscellaneous items to locals alongside artwork and trinkets to tourists.A tourist photographs the famous 28 tram in Lisbon’s historic heart, Baixa.Ana Brigida for The New York TimesBut she said Lisbon could use a better balance in how many tourists it welcomes, because “how it was before was also too much.” Overall, a mere trickle of tourists have returned to Portugal so far compared to the pre-virus hordes. Those who made the trip were able to enjoy the city as few have: without swarms of other tourists to jostle with. At the ornate Praça do Comércio, a historic square typically packed with visitors, just a few dozen lingered. You could easily take a wide-angle photo outside Belém Tower, a popular landmark, at noon on Sunday with no other people in it. The line for custard tarts at nearby Pastéis de Belém, typically an out-the-door affair, passed in a few brief minutes Sunday morning. At Tasco do Chico, renowned for its live fado music, a spot at the bar was available one minute before Saturday night’s first performance began. Belém Tower, one of the most famous monuments in Lisbon, has few tourists still. Ana Brigida for The New York TimesIn one lively scene reminiscent of pre-pandemic freedom, tourists and locals alike converged Saturday night in Bairro Alto, with bars and restaurants packed with revelers until the 10:30 p.m. curfew. Nicci Howson, 65, said she was surrounded by Portuguese people dancing in Cervejaria do Bairro, a restaurant in that neighborhood, the first time she had danced outside her home in a year.“You could see the elation on people’s faces to just let loose,” she said.At 10:30 p.m., when some Portuguese might just be sitting down to dinner in normal times, the bars closed and sent packs of people dancing and singing tightly together in the narrow streets, until they were shooed away by police on motorcycles about five minutes later. The revelers lingered in the nearby Luís de Camões Square until 11:30 p.m., when officers dispersed the group. But during the day, there were no such crowds to contend with.Mark Boulle, 38, from Oxford, England, said he typically tries to avoid crowds while traveling, so the trip was in that respect a dream. When he took a day trip to Sintra, a nearby town with postcard-ready palaces and castles, on Monday, “for the first half of the day I virtually had the whole place to myself,” he said. But he was dismayed by the widespread use of masks outdoors in Lisbon — a sharp departure from behaviors in Britain, where the government has never suggested wearing masks outside and most people do not. It was a source of tension for both visitors and the Portuguese.British tourists in Lisbon did not have competition for a prime view at the ancient São Jorge Castle. Ana Brigida for The New York TimesUsing masks outdoors is mandatory in Portugal, with violators in some locations, including beaches, facing fines. At the Castelo de São Jorge, an 11th century castle with sweeping views of the city, a security guard roamed the grounds outside, instructing the few tourists there to put masks on while standing far away from others. A bookseller at an open-air market in Baixa grumbled that the tourists ought to comply with local attitudes and customs about masks, instead of bringing their own ideas abroad.But Mr. Boulle said he wanted the sun on his face. As he went to buy his ticket at the Jerónimos Monastery, a popular tourist attraction, he recalled, a security guard stopped him before he could buy his ticket, asking him to put a mask on. Mr. Boulle replied that he has asthma, and he couldn’t wear one because he’d have trouble breathing. “That isn’t true, but I just wanted to see,” he said. “In England you can always say that.” No such luck, as the security guard insisted. Frederico Almeida, the general manager of the Albatroz Hotel in the nearby beach town of Cascais, said he and his staff has had to remind visitors from Britain of the requirements.Despite these issues, he’s happy to see British tourists again. They are the top market for the area, he said, and their return has been swift. The 42-room hotel was at about 20 percent occupancy two weeks ago; now it’s up to about 80 percent. “All of a sudden, in the last two weeks, it’s as if we’ve turned back to normality,” he said. “It’s wonderful.”THE WORLD IS REOPENING. LET’S GO, SAFELY. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you’ll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world. More

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    What Will Happen to All the Empty Office Buildings and Hotels?

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    Commercial real estate has been hit hard by the pandemic, but there are plans to convert some of the now empty spaces into apartment buildings. Dark windows. Quiet lobbies. Hushed halls.Many of New York’s hotels and office buildings have been empty for more than a year now as the pandemic continues to keep tourists and workers out of the city.And some of those properties may never recover. An effort is afoot to take these eerily empty commercial structures and convert them to housing of some kind and perhaps other uses as well, potentially spurring a number of building conversions not seen since the crash of the late-1980s.But in the development world, top-to-bottom makeovers can take years, and a robust recovery could make landlords think twice about reinventions. Space and safety requirements could also complicate some conversions, real estate executives say.Still, with some companies allowing employees to permanently work from home, and officials bracing for tourism to not fully recover for years, there is support across the city for breathing new life into struggling buildings.“Covid has expedited the ultimate repurposings,” said Nathan Berman, the managing principal of Metroloft Management, a developer in the process of buying two large office buildings in Lower Manhattan that have been hammered by the pandemic.These shell-of-their-former-selves buildings, which Mr. Berman declined to name while negotiations continue, would become market-rate rentals. “They are perfect targets,” he said.From corporate high-rises in the financial district to boutique lodgings near Central Park to mid-market accommodations in Midtown, real estate players are redeveloping or canvassing dozens of sites, according to those involved.So far, most of the attention has been trained on Manhattan, home to the city’s largest business and tourism districts, and where the pandemic has dealt the harshest blows. But hotels in Brooklyn, where prices for buildings are generally lower, are also getting a look.The conversions seem to fall into three categories: offices to housing, hotels to housing, and hotels turning into offices, though not for long stays but short-term sessions.“It’s definitely all happening, for sure,” said Eric Anton, an agent with the firm Marcus and Millichap who specializes in selling buildings. Of the seven hotels in New York he currently represents, three will likely become senior housing, one will become market-rate apartments, and the balance will stay hotels.“But a lot of the conversations revolve around whether the conversions can happen efficiently,” Mr. Anton said.An alcove studio at 20 Broad Street, which was an office building until 2018. Conversions of office buildings often result in unusual layouts with long halls and windowless sleeping areas.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBoardrooms to BedroomsSome buildings, of course, can be converted more easily than others.Decades ago, prewar office buildings were all the rage for reinvention. In the financial district, which became hollowed out after insurance companies and investment banks moved uptown, developers grabbed up limestone and granite former headquarters and sliced them up into apartments.But there aren’t many of those grand old buildings left, at least downtown, forcing developers to consider newer structures, like glassy mid-20th-century office towers, which in some cases have become obsolete as fancier offerings have risen around them.In March, more than 17 percent of Manhattan’s office space was vacant or soon to be, with a slightly higher rate downtown, according to CBRE, the real estate firm. Few of those spaces have been so empty since the early 1990s.Though many landlords are long-term investors who don’t panic in tumultuous times, the ghost-town vibe may be at least causing jitters. Since the pandemic began a year ago, city projections suggest that Manhattan office towers are worth 25 percent less.Mr. Berman, who for years converted mostly prewar properties, like 67 Wall Street, 84 William Street and 20 Exchange Place, has lately gone Modernist himself. The two office buildings he is now in talks to buy went up in the postwar period, he said, adding that they are also of the “Class B” variety, industry-speak for “a bit drab.”“It’s too expensive to upgrade those kinds of buildings, so a change of use is really the optimum path,” said Mr. Berman, adding that they also aren’t usually landmarks, which reduces the number of necessary permits.But how easily can structures where people once pecked at computers and huddled in conference rooms become places to live?John Cetra, a co-founder of the firm CetraRuddy Architecture, on the roof of 20 Broad Street, a 1950s office building he helped convert to luxury housing.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesIt really depends, said the architect John Cetra, a co-founder of the firm CetraRuddy, which has made bedrooms out of boardrooms at several Manhattan addresses.One major factor is the distance between the facade and the elevators, otherwise known as a “lease span.” When it comes to creating housing, the smaller the lease span, the better, according to Mr. Cetra.A span of 30 feet is ideal, said Mr. Cetra, as he recently led a tour of 20 Broad Street, a 1957 former office building next to the New York Stock Exchange that in 2018 swapped its stockbrokers for residents. (Its thick-doored bank vault remains in the basement though, and now serves as a lounge.)At 20 Broad, a CetraRuddy project, the lease span measures 45 feet, which is close to the outer limit of what can work, he explained, adding that anything greater “just becomes too awkward,” because apartments would likely have to have large windowless spaces and other hard-to-adapt spaces.The facade of 20 Broad Street in the financial district, which was once an office building and is now a luxury apartment building. The next wave of conversions is expected to target similar structures.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBut recently constructed office buildings often have lease spans of 50 feet or more, Mr. Cetra said, suggesting that laying out conventional apartments in them could be difficult.Focusing on the floor plans at 20 Broad, which has 533 rental units across 30 stories, then, can be instructive. Reaching the living room in No. 721, an alcove studio on the seventh floor, for instance, requires navigating a long gangplank-like hall. But what could have been a void between the front door and a couch has been filled creatively — with a closet, a washer and dryer and the alcove, which can fit a bed but has no windows. Also squeezed in, along one wall, in what might be called a half-galley-style, is a kitchen. Mr. Cetra is the first to admit that the quirks, which in No. 721 includes an off-center window, are unavoidable when tackling a commercial conversion. But on the plus side, no two units seem the same. “You’re not doing cookie-cutter apartments,” he said. “You get so much more variety.”The studio, with about 500 square feet, is listed at $3,760 per month. But to help fill the building, which is grappling with a 40 percent Covid-related vacancy rate, its landlord, Metroloft, is dangling four months of free rent, so renters would essentially pay $2,600 a month.The Holiday Inn FiDi, a large hotel in Lower Manhattan, is now in foreclosure after defaulting on its loans. Some developers are pushing to convert struggling hotels like this one to affordable housing.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesNo More Room ServiceIt’s a hard time to be a hotelier. Facing a drought of tourists and business travelers, about 200 of the city’s 700 hotels have closed since Covid hit, and many of those closures are expected to be permanent, especially as debts mount.There are also many soured loans. Since fall, hotels in the New York City area have led the country in terms of delinquencies, according to the analytics firm Trepp, which tracks securitized mortgages. In April, New York hotels accounted for $1.8 billion in unpaid balances, far outpacing second-place Chicago with about $1 billion past due.Even though the construction of new hotel rooms does continue in the city, there have been casualties, both big and small. Hilton Times Square, a 476-room hotel, shuttered last fall, and after months when the owner, Sunstone Hotel Investors, failed to make loan payments, wound up this winter in the hands of a lender with an uncertain fate.Similarly, the Holiday Inn FiDi, a soaring 50-story, 492-room high-rise near the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, is now in foreclosure because of its three troubled loans, according to Trepp. But relatively small properties are in tight spots as well, like the 72-room Hotel Giraffe on Park Avenue South, which has fallen more than three months behind with its mortgage checks.What’s still up and running is often not being run as a typical hotel. Starting a year ago, in an effort to stop the spread of Covid in often cramped shelters, more than 60 city hotels became shelters for 9,500 homeless people, an arrangement that continues at many addresses. The Watson Hotel at 440 West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The two-towered hotel, which has served as a homeless shelter during the pandemic, recently sold to a developer that may convert one tower into market-rate housing.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesBut developers are starting to consider struggling hotels as potential investments. This month, Yellowstone Real Estate Investments plunked down $175 million for the 600-room Watson Hotel in Midtown that in many ways is an emblem of the embattled hospitality sector.Long a Holiday Inn, the West 57th Street property was reinvented as a boutique getaway in 2017 by a new owner, BD Hotels, whose portfolio includes downtown hot spots like the Mercer, the Bowery and the Jane. But then Covid hit, and BD defaulted, despite turning much of the Watson Hotel into a homeless shelter, for which the city reimbursed it.For the 1964 building’s newest chapter, Yellowstone will turn one of the hotel’s two towers into market-rate apartments, according to sources familiar with the deal, while leaving the other tower as a hotel. Isaac Hera, the firm’s chief executive, said in an email that plans were not set yet, but added that “having the flexibility of implementing different uses and different business plans is a very attractive proposition.”City and state officials have pushed for the conversion of hotels into affordable housing, but developers note that building codes could make that difficult.For starters, apartments must be at least 150 square feet, while hotel rooms are allowed to be smaller. And apartments require kitchens, though in some affordable-housing complexes, tenants can share kitchen facilities, said Mark Ginsberg, a principal at Curtis + Ginsberg Architects, which has designed affordable projects.Adding kitchens and enlarging rooms to meet codes could also ultimately reduce the number of beds, a counterproductive move, Mr. Ginsberg said. It could also balloon costs, turning a standard hotel makeover with $3 million in cosmetic changes into a $30 million overhaul.The process seems so daunting that an investor interested in converting a struggling 60-room hotel on the Lower East Side is getting cold feet, said Mr. Ginsberg, who is assessing the site for the investor.Since last spring, Mr. Ginsberg has looked at about a half dozen other hotel sites for similar clients. “With the destruction of the tourism industry, this is the time to act,” he said.Ted Houghton, an affordable-housing developer, says that hotels in industrial zones will likely be conversion targets.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesIt can also be tricky to identify ideal sites, said Ted Houghton, the head of Gateway Housing, an affordable-housing developer that creates what is known as supportive housing, which provides some social services on-site.Hotels in industrial areas seem to be low-hanging fruit, said Mr. Houghton, who began his career in the late 1980s, during another housing crash, by helping create supportive housing in the crumbling Times Square Hotel on West 43rd Street.Many neighbors don’t approve of hotels in industrial zones because they take land away from true manufacturers, he said. About 250 of New York’s 700 hotels are in such zones, though you wouldn’t always know an industrial zone when you see one. The Mercer, in ritzy SoHo, for example, is in one, as is the line of hotels along Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn — though converting those locations to affordable housing could also stir controversy.“No hotel has a for-sale sign on it, but every hotel could be for sale,” Mr. Houghton said.Streamlining the redesign process so that old hotels can become affordable housing is a priority of State Senator Brian Kavanaugh, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. He is sponsoring a bill that would allow developers to convert hotels into affordable housing without having to get the kinds of building permits required for new residential properties. Also, the law would apply only to hotels in industrial zones within about a block of residential neighborhoods.“You don’t want to be dropping affordable housing into the middle of a desert,” said Mr. Kavanaugh, who added that offices would be much harder to convert. “It would be too expensive, even with subsidies. That would probably happen only with market-rate apartments.”Similarly, a bill from Michael Gianaris, a State Senator from Queens, would give the state power to buy distressed hotels and office buildings, and redevelop them into housing for low-income and homeless tenants, though most Manhattan addresses would be excluded. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has also discussed similar goals.The state budget passed this month allocates $100 million to reinvent hotels as affordable housing. Plus, $270 million in the federal American Rescue Plan is designated for the homeless in New York, and those funds could potentially help finance conversions as well. “There is a sense of a real opportunity here,” Mr. Kavanaugh said.20 Broad Street, a converted office building in the financial district that once housed stockbrokers, has transformed a former vault into a lounge.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesComing Full CircleIn a city where renewal takes odd turns — churches have morphed into nightclubs, factories into fashion shops, and post offices into train stations — it should come as no surprise that some buildings can revert to their original purpose years later.That’s what’s happening at 960 Sixth Avenue, a 16-story limestone edifice at West 35th Street that began life as an office building, had a brief turn as a hotel, and is now set to welcome workers again in May.Opening in 1930, the building housed fabric textile showrooms and yarn firms for much of the 20th century, before Atlantic Bank of New York took it over for its headquarters. In the late 2000s, an attempt by the Statuto Group, an Italian firm, to recast the building with a mix of creative tenants fell flat because of the Great Recession, and a foreclosure followed. The next owner, the developer Hidrock Properties, then created a 167-key outpost of Courtyard by Marriott. But after eight years in operation, the coronavirus put the hotel out of business last year.A hotel room at a former Courtyard by Marriott has been converted to a co-working space at 960 Sixth Avenue.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesThe latest location of the Yard, a co-working provider, is in a former hotel at 960 Sixth Avenue that was originally an office building.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesNow, the building, which also goes by 8 Herald Square, is transforming itself into a co-working hub from the Yard, a Brooklyn-based company. In a third-floor area that used to welcome tourists, the Yard has removed the reception desk and couches, and replaced them with conference rooms, phone booths and a kitchen. And in hotel rooms above, the Yard has replaced beds with desks — sometimes four to a room — while installing fake plants in shower stalls to make them less hotel-like.Desks rent for about $500 a month, in leases as short as 30 days, said Richard Beyda, a Yard co-founder, who looked at several other shuttered lodgings before landing there.“It felt like a hotel until we did our usual aesthetics,” said Mr. Beyda of his first hotel-to-office job. And while some may look around at all the empty office buildings and grimace, Mr. Beyda sees an ecosystem that’s adapting.Workers who no longer want to punch in for a nine-to-five experience might come around eventually, warming to his firm’s more flexible workplace strategy. “It might be the only silver lining of the pandemic,” he said.And at least one landlord is considering the ultimate repurposing: demolition.Vornado Realty Trust announced plans this month to raze the Hotel Pennsylvania, a 1,700-room building across from Madison Square Garden that opened in 1919, but has been shuttered for more than a year, and replace it with an office tower layered with outdoor gardens.The Hotel Pennsylvania “is decades past its glory and sell-by date,” said Steven Roth, Vornado’s chairman, in a letter to shareholders. But he also suggested that there were fundamental problems with the city’s hospitality industry that predate the pandemic.“The hotel math has deteriorated significantly over the last five years,” Mr. Roth wrote, “a victim of oversupply, relentlessly rising costs and taxes, and an aging physical plant.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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    Airbnb Is Driving Hosts Elsewhere With Costly Pandemic Policies

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine RolloutSee Your Local RiskNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAirbnb Is Driving Hosts Elsewhere With Costly Pandemic PoliciesHurt by refunds, some are trying to cut the site out of bookings or taking legal action. The company says it is working to reduce tensions.Lorraine Luongo of Myrtle Beach, S.C., has filed an arbitration claim against Airbnb seeking to recover the money she lost.Credit…Leslie Ryann McKellar for The New York TimesFeb. 21, 2021, 2:30 p.m. ETOver six years, Lorraine Luongo went from renting out a spare room in her house in Myrtle Beach, S.C., to owning and managing 10 properties that she listed on Airbnb.Last year, when the pandemic hit and Airbnb allowed customers to cancel bookings with full refunds, she lost $25,000 in reservations overnight. The payments that Airbnb then offered hosts as a concession were “peanuts,” she said.Ms. Luongo realized her business was too reliant on Airbnb, she said. So she created listings on competing sites like VRBO and Golightly, a site for female travelers, and plans to build a website to deal with guests directly. In November, she filed an arbitration claim against Airbnb for breach of contract, seeking to recover the money she lost.“They’re supposed to be valuing the hosts, but everything is more in favor of the guests,” Ms. Luongo, 45, said.Ms. Luongo is just one of Airbnb’s rental operators who have become increasingly disillusioned with the company. While there had always been tensions between Airbnb and its four million hosts around the world, a rift has widened in the pandemic after the company changed its cancellation policy and hosts saw what little power they had.For some rental operators, the relationship is broken beyond repair. Hundreds with more than 10,000 listings are pursuing legal action against Airbnb, according to Bryant Greening, a lawyer at LegalRideshare, the Chicago firm that is helping Ms. Luongo with her claim. Others are trying to bypass Airbnb by booking guests directly. Last year, direct bookings made up 25 percent of reservations among rental managers surveyed by Hostfully, a travel software company, up from 19 percent in 2019.“A lot of the damage is permanent,” said Jasper Ribbers, who runs Get Paid for Your Pad, a company in Barcelona, Spain, that advises short-term rental operators. “The trust is kind of gone.”The fracturing is happening at a crucial moment for Airbnb. The company, which went public in December and immediately topped more than $100 billion in value, faces high expectations as its stock price has soared further. Airbnb plans to report its first earnings as a public company on Feb. 25.That puts the San Francisco company under pressure to show a thriving business — taking a cut of the fees when people book properties that hosts list on its site — even as new surges of the coronavirus dampen travel.Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s chief executive, said of hosts, “We have a lot of work to do, and frankly, they’re still hurting,”Credit…Jessica Chou for The New York TimesIn an interview on the day of Airbnb’s initial public offering, Brian Chesky, the chief executive, acknowledged tensions with hosts but said the relationship had improved over the last year.“We have a lot of work to do, and frankly, they’re still hurting,” he said.Catherine Powell, Airbnb’s head of hosting, said hosts’ views of their relationship with the company improved 17 percent between January 2020 and last month. “Our relationship with hosts is incredibly important,” she said. “Our hosts are what powers Airbnb.”When $77,000 disappearsAirbnb hosts trace many of their issues with the company to March 14, three days after the World Health Organization declared the pandemic. That was when Airbnb enacted an “extenuating circumstances policy.”The change angered many rental operators, who had previously chosen their own cancellation policies, including a nonrefundable option. The new policy allowed guests to cancel with a full refund, overriding some hosts’ preferences. Many saw their livelihoods disappear overnight.Darik Eaton, who managed 50 properties in Seattle, laid off 10 employees after the change and has reconfigured his company to run “leaner,” including dropping some of the properties he managed, he said.“I watched $77,000 disappear from my bank account in one day,” Mr. Eaton said.In late March, Mr. Chesky apologized to hosts for how the decision had been communicated. “We have heard from you, and we know we could have been better partners,” he said in a video. The company set up a $250 million fund to cover some of the cancellation costs and a $10 million relief fund.But for some, the money was simply a gesture. Benjamin Vail, 34, who operates 70 Airbnb listings in Columbus, Ohio, said that while the properties he managed had lost roughly $70,000 of bookings, he got a check from the company for $3,211. Other hosts passed around images of checks with amounts like $2 and $4, he said.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    In Canada, Americans Are Missed, With Limits

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskNew Variants TrackerVaccine RolloutAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIn Canada, Americans Are Missed, With LimitsU.S. visitors usually mean big business for Canada’s tourism industry. But the pandemic has blunted lonesomeness for the country’s best friend.Before the pandemic, American visitors were frequent guests at the Fairmont le Château Frontenac, a castlelike hotel in Quebec City.Credit…GettyFeb. 10, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETDavid McMillan, the co-owner of Montreal’s famed temple of gluttony, Joe Beef, used to spend his days obsessing over his signature dishes like rabbit with mustard sauce, and lobster spaghetti. These days, however, he has another preoccupation: Studying American vaccination rates.Before the pandemic, so many American gastronomy pilgrims from New York, Boston and Los Angeles came each week to Joe Beef that many local residents, facing a 10-week waiting list, all but gave up trying. The Americans, Mr. McMillan recalled wistfully, thought nothing of buying expensive bottles of Champagne and sucking down oysters until midnight, before purchasing his prophetic-sounding cookbook “Surviving the Apocalypse.”“Ah, how I miss the Americans,” said Mr. McMillan, who presides over a mini-empire of four restaurants in the city, including Liverpool House, where Justin Trudeau once bromanced President Obama. American tourists, he added, accounted for half of Joe Beef’s pre-pandemic weekly revenue of about $118,000, or about 150,000 Canadian dollars. “When the Americans were here every night it felt like we were putting on a Broadway show.”David McMillan is the co-owner of Montreal’s Joe Beef, a restaurant which attracted American gastronomy pilgrims before the pandemic.Credit…David Giral for The New York Times“Now, I look every day at how the U.S. vaccination is going,” he added. “And I get messages every day from American clients asking when they can get back in.”It’s a question many in the Canadian tourism industry have also been asking, ever since the Canada-U. S. border was closed to nonessential travelers in March. The loss of American visitors, armed with their strong dollars and consuming zeal, has buffeted popular destinations like Montreal, Quebec City and Vancouver, already reeling from a debilitating pandemic. Canadian airlines have been forced to make thousands of layoffs.More than two thirds of the 21 million international tourists who came to Canada in 2019 were from the United States, according to government data, with Americans pumping about $8.7 billion into the economy. That’s compared to the nearly $1.3 billion spent by Chinese visitors, about $1 billion by Britons and about $735 million by the French.The absence of American tourists feels acute in many quarters of Canada. Above, a deserted stretch of Rue Notre Dame West in Montreal.Credit…David Giral for The New York TimesAbsence makes the heart grow fonder — but not enough to open borders.Canadians have long had a love-hate relationship with their larger, showier neighbor south of the border. That ambivalence was magnified during the Trump administration, when the mercurial American president slapped punishing tariffs on the country, suggested Canada had burned down the White House during the War of 1812 (the country didn’t then exist) and called its prime minister, Justin Trudeau, “very dishonest” and “weak.”But it has always been more love than hate when it comes to travel between the two countries, with Americans drawn by Canada’s proximity, its common language in most regions and its mix of cosmopolitan cities and natural landscapes.The inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who spent her disco-dancing teenage years in Montreal, has renewed the ardor between the two allies, while vaccination has created cautious optimism about taming the pandemic. Still, while the tourism industry is experiencing one of its worst crises since World War II, recent polls show that the vast majority of Canadians want the borders to remain closed. Canadians, a typically rule-abiding people with a deference to scientific authority, have looked with some horror at the spiraling infection rates in the United States, and the handling of the coronavirus during the Trump administration.Mélanie Joly, Canada’s minister of economic development, who is responsible for tourism, said keeping the borders closed was a matter of pragmatism. “We can’t talk about reopening the economy until we stop the spread of the virus,” she said in an interview. Lamenting the absent Americans, she added: “It’s a bit like losing your best friend but you are sick and your best friend is sick and everyone is better off staying at home.”She said she hoped the travel industry would be “back on its feet” by September, as vaccination in Canada and the United States accelerated. The border, she stressed, would remain closed until the pandemic is contained.The Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal is popular with American visitors. Credit…David Giral for The New York TimesAt the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal, American museum-goers from New York, Massachusetts and Vermont helped turn a pre-pandemic exhibition on Leonard Cohen, the gravelly-voiced Montreal-born balladeer, into a blockbuster. But the museum’s director, John Zeppetelli, said knowing friends and colleagues in the art world who had contracted the virus while attending art fairs last year in the United States and elsewhere had underscored the need for caution. “Public health has to supersede economic concerns,” Mr. Zeppetelli said.Covid-19 tests, quarantines and a cruise ship ban create obstacles to travel.As it is, Canada itself is experiencing a lethal second wave, with a curfew in effect in Quebec, a lockdown in most parts of Ontario, the country’s most populous province, and border restrictions in each of the country’s Atlantic coast provinces that have required even Canadians from other provinces to quarantine.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Airbnb Tops $100 Billion on First Day of Trading

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAirbnb Tops $100 Billion on First Day of Trading, Reviving Talk of a BubbleThe home-rental company’s blockbuster I.P.O. followed that of the delivery company DoorDash. Investors piled into both.Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s chief executive, on Nasdaq’s digital billboard in Times Square on Thursday.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesDec. 10, 2020SAN FRANCISCO — Over the last decade, Airbnb has upended the travel industry, riled regulators, frustrated local communities and created a mini-economy of short-term rental operators, all while spinning a warm narrative of belonging and connection.On Thursday, Airbnb sold investors on an even unlikelier story: that it is a pandemic winner.The company’s shares skyrocketed on their first day of trading, rising 113 percent above the initial public offering price of $68 to close at $144.71. That put Airbnb’s market capitalization at $100.7 billion — the largest in its generation of “unicorn” companies and more than Expedia Group and Marriott International combined.Airbnb’s offering raised $3.5 billion, making it the biggest I.P.O. this year. More