Hard Rock Expects It’ll Be a Year Until its Casinos and Hotels Will Recover

The coronavirus has led to casinos, hotels, and restaurants shutting their doors as people practice social distancing and stay indoors.

Hard Rock revealed this week that it expects it will take a year for the company’s casinos, hotels, and restaurants to recover after they reopen.

“There’s going to be a real challenge, especially here in the United States, as far as ramping the business back up,” Hard Rock’s chairman, Jim Allen, said Wednesday. “We’re planning on that taking a year,” Allen said in a CNBC interview.

Allen told CNBC that he does not see a quick return to robust business after its coronavirus-closed casinos, hotels and restaurants reopen.

“We reopened the Shenzhen Hotel, obviously [in] a global city in China. Beautiful property. Occupancy is right now at 12%. We’ve been reopen for a good 3½, almost four weeks,” he said.

Allen cites the Shenzhen property as an example of the tough road ahead that other parts of the world may face in restarting their businesses.

Tourism supports many of the company’s hotels. “If you look at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square [in New York City], a restaurant that does $50 million in actual sales, that’s all tourism. … London is tourism,” said Allen.

Allen pointed out that it’s in the New York area, which is the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S. “We’re very concerned about that business as we try to navigate through the summer, which is traditionally the time of year when they have their most profitable months.”