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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.
Kim Reynolds balanced approach with fitness centers and COVID-19 pays dividends Leigh Cunius, Molly Osborn, Tim Clark and Aaron Aeschliman, Iowa View contributors
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Like many industries, Iowa’s fitness industry has struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the spring business closures, when public officials were only beginning to understand the novel coronavirus, fitness operators saw a decline in membership as people were staying home to slow the spread.
But despite this tough situation, our industry is better positioned to survive the pandemic in Iowa than our counterparts in many states, including neighbors like Minnesota, because Gov. Kim Reynolds took a balanced approach and followed the science when it came to virus mitigation at fitness centers.