Hotels

Tough economic times are forcing Chicago hotels to get creative.

Chicago’s hotel industry has been hit hard by the recession. Occupancy rates downtown were 48 percent in February, down from 54 percent a year earlier, according to Smith Travel Research Inc., a firm that follows the hotel industry. The average cost of a room fell by more than $16 to almost $133—an 11 percent decline.

One increasingly popular recessionary tactic is bartering, where hotels exchange room nights for everything from advertising to dry cleaning.

While bartering is not a phenomenon of the economic downturn, hotels have turned to it more and more since the recession took hold.

“With small hotels, we [barter] quite frequently because our budgets are quite small,” said Lanny Grossman, a spokesman for The Talbott Hotel, a 149-room boutique hotel near North Michigan Avenue. “We have to maximize our exposure, and what we have to work with is room nights.”

Click HERE to keep reading at Medill Reports - Chicago.