Gulf's Hotels Hard-Hit
By Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina shut down at least 286 hotels with nearly 46,000 rooms along the Gulf Coast, and three-quarters of those sustained major damage from wind and flooding and won't open for months, according to the first comprehensive survey of the region's hotel industry. Roughly 20% of the damaged hotels are considered total losses, the survey said.

In the New Orleans metropolitan area, at least 127 hotels with almost 25,000 rooms are closed, according to the survey by Lodging Econometrics, a Portsmouth, N.H., lodging-analysis firm.

The worst-hit hotels appear to be on the Mississippi coast in Biloxi and Gulfport. All 11 casinos on Mississippi's Gulf Coast sustained major damage and are closed to hotel business. By the state's own count, Mississippi had 141 hotels with 16,000 rooms on the Gulf Coast. The gambling industry alone employed 14,000 workers and paid $500,000 in taxes to the state every day. That's almost all gone. "It's pretty much all shut down down there," said Steve Martin, a spokesman for the Mississippi Development Authority.

Nearly every major hotel chain was affected by the storm including Hilton Hotels Corp., InterContinental Hotels Group PLC and Cendant Corp., which owns Ramada, Days Inn and other brands.

Cendant said that 132 of its hotels in the region were damaged, including eight seriously and four that were totally destroyed. The company said 30 hotels remain closed. Hilton took one of the hardest hits. The company gets about 5% of its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization from the New Orleans area. Hilton spokesman Marc Grossman said most of Hilton's properties will remain closed through the end of the year, but a few could reopen in part as early as next month.

InterContinental, the owner of Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza among others, still has 14 hotels closed, 12 of which are in New Orleans.

-- Peter Sanders contributed to this article.

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