Originally published April 17, 2020
The Pennsylvania investment firm that owns the Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove in Miami has applied for as many as 48 taxpayer-backed loans under an emergency program meant to help the nation’s smallest businesses hang on to their employees through the coronavirus pandemic.
A Maryland hotel company that did more than $1.5 billion in revenue last year has applied for more than 50 loans — and been approved for about 10 so far.
And Winter Park’s Ruth’s Hospitality Group Inc. — the parent company of Ruth’s Chris Steak House that made $42 million in profits last year and spent $41 million buying back stock and paying dividends to shareholders — revealed Monday that it has received $20 million through two small business loans.
Across the country, hotel and restaurant companies of all sizes are tapping into the “Paycheck Protection Program,” the $350 billion fund that Congress set up specifically for small businesses as part of an overall $2.2 trillion economic rescue plan.
Midsized and large hoteliers and restaurateurs are qualifying for the potentially forgivable loans — more than one, in many cases ― under special rules written into the program at the request of industry lobbyists, who argued that hospitality businesses have been uniquely devastated by coast-to-coast travel bans, shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders.
And now — as congressional leaders negotiate another spending bill that would add $250 billion or more into the PPP program, which officially ran out of money by Thursday morning — hotels and restaurants are pressing lawmakers to loosen the rules around how they are supposed to spend that money.
They have asked to spend less of their PPP loan proceeds on wages for workers and more on other expenses, such as mortgage principal or franchise fees that get paid to larger companies like Marriott International Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. They want to wait longer before they must rehire employees who have already been furloughed or laid off.
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