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Bloomington-Normal hotels saw a $25 million drop in revenue over the last year with the pandemic drastically reducing travel.
Ray Ceresa is president of the Bloomington-Normal Hotel and Lodging Association. He's also general manager of the DoubleTree by Hilton in Bloomington. The hotel has had to cut nearly 40 jobs since the pandemic began.
Ceresa said it's been so bad, one of the best things to happen to local hotels recently was a big power outage.
“During the peak of all those repairs, there were up to 900 Ameren employees or contractors here in town that filled a lot of the hotels here in town, including mine which was a nice surprise,” Ceresa said.