Portland In the Toilet – Hotels Lose as Liberal City Declines
Considered a liberal haven in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon’s key city of Portland is losing businesses to an epidemic of crime, drugs, and homelessness in the downtown area. Now, many hotels are reportedly struggling to generate enough revenue to stay in business.
While the COVID-19 health emergency and lockdowns were blamed for the nosedive of the hospitality industry in popular destinations, many were quick to recover from the big worldwide bump in travel and tourism after the first year of the pandemic. These included hotels on Oregon’s coast. But not so with Portland where recovery remained painfully slow. And it was more than the big health scare inflicting it on the city.
In April 2021, KGW8 of NBC News reported that destruction from the 2020 protests, which were carried out for months by leftist activists in the city, was partly responsible for low occupancy of Portland hotels. The story cited Benson Hotel Managing Director George Schweitzer on the reasons behind this lag and wrote:
But hoteliers say trash, tents, boarded up windows and last summer’s unrest are keeping visitors away. Schweitzer said guests tell him so.
The hotels most affected were in the downtown and the Lloyd District areas of the city, as reported in the story.
More than two years down the road, things haven’t changed for downtown Portland, not for better at least. Many businesses left the city due to the endless decay of downtown with mentally unwell and/or drug addicted homeless people filling the streets. In winter, the poor and sick homeless people are seen riding the local light rail back and forth between various stations only to escape the cold outside.
In June this year, according to Portland Tribune, the City Council documented “lackluster recovery” in 2023 with a loss of $100 million to the hotel industry as compared to its pre-pandemic revenue.
As reported in The Seattle Times (September 18), travel industry in Portland is going thorugh an ongoing crisis and the city’s tourism office blames the “perceptions of downtown” for it:
Hotels in Portland’s central city sold 1.2 million rooms in the first seven months of 2023, according to hotel industry data firm STR. That’s down 20% from 2019.
Travel Portland CEO Jeff Miller was cited in the story telling that visitors are wary of Portland because of the accounts of the city’s homelessness and drug addiction published in national media. Many prominent hotels are right around the corner from miserable scenes of distressed and homeless people, tents on sides of the streets, and open abuse of drugs by addicts. Local people and visitors don’t feel safe either.
“Visitor sentiment is not improving, and we know the reputational damage being done has the potential to last if we don’t seek quick action to make our streets safer.”
The idiots running Portland did it to themselves
Every city run by liberals is the same. Liberals can turn a bar of gold into a turd in short order. Destroying freedom is their number one specialty.
Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Frisco and Auschwitz all offer the same receptions to visitors. DON’T visit them!
If you lump all American cities into a single bag, chances are you will be wrong.
Portland and the Northwest are different from SF, Chicago and other cities. And saying they are the same as Auschwitz is just hyperbolic stupidity. And saying all “Democratic cities” are the same is like saying all cities are the same or that Republican cites are better, neither of which can be true. All cities at some level share similar problems, but all are different too.
And as far as Democrats turning gold into turds, please mark WIKI on the subject: “Since World War II, the United States economy has performed worse on average under the administration of Republican presidents than Democrat presidents. The reasons for this are debated, and the observation applies to economic variables including job creation, GDP growth, stock market returns, personal income growth and corporate profits. The unemployment rate has fallen on average under democratic presidents, while it has risen on average under republican presidents. Budget deficits relative to the size of the economy were lower on average for democratic presidents.[1][2] Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents. [3]” Look it up, the story is the same no matter where you try.
Fact is most cities are run by Democrats and most cities have problems right now, post pandemic and more. They even feel national problems like NYC’s immigrant cities within the city. Fact is whenever you have increased population densities, you have increased liberalism. If you think about it, it even makes common sense that when large groups of people live together, that socialized programs before more popular. Whatever….
A decade ago I read an interesting piece on the Northwest liberal experiment gone awry and some reasons that it would not get better soon. Seems to be spot on with the result — sure not getting better. What the article noted was some “baked in” unintentional outcomes. The first was that if you offer great programs for the needy: drug programs, needle programs, housing, etc. —- the needy may come. You may actually attract folks looking to benefit from your programs. You may even become an island in the storm. The second was that as time passes, you build an infrastructure and economy that benefits from this “market.” People who supply good, build and maintain housing, etc. And these folks great lobbies, and these lobbies strive to increase those economies.
Bottom line was given the demographics of folks migrating to take advantage of the programs, and folks lobbying to expand such programs for their own businesses, the attempt to legislate anything is hard because there are large pro and large con constituencies on any issue and the people needing support keep on coming….. Perfect example of circling the bowl in a death spiral.
That is not San Fran and not even close to Chicago or most other US cities.
That said, crime is down in Portland I believe, but as a tourist spot, never has been. Seattle yes, but Portland does not hit any top ten, or even top twenty lists. It’s a rainy little po-dunk that would probably be first to be dropped for a city visit. I lived in Erie PA for a time and I know the feeling. Erie is a gem that no one visits. That’s one of the reasons it continues to draw me back actually. Buffalo is up the road and does not do much better. But Cleveland — it gets hoping all the time. Go figure.
So I hope Portland the best; I have enjoyed my visits there, but frankly, it is not drawing me back. Too much rain, too little of interest. I still remember my first visit, a beautiful day, blue sky, of which I commented to the cabbie and caught a NY earful on Portland’s crummy weather. I think they are in the vortex and need a break-out solution to turn this thing around. It really looks like liberalism failed. Felt that way as Clinton gained the Presidency and he put Republican ideas to work, and against our doubts, it seemed to work. People came back to the cities and we all had fun.
Bottom line: things are better when we listen to each other and take actions to fix things. And even if we fix em, something, maybe the same thing, will break again. Or we can spend our time throwing stones at each other saying “all things, pick Dem or Repub, are bad” which is just not productive, as we are seeing.
BS, I live in the democratic hellhole known as Illinois and Democrats have controlled the state over 60 years. Their soft on crime, high taxes and corruption are directly responsible for conditions in Chicago. Your lie about prosperity under democratic rule is obvious to all but the brainwashed. Everyone knows Democrats design their disasters called laws to take effect when they leave office. And the news media covers for them by lying. The whole Nation is collapsing and the media changes the definition of recession to cover Democrats. Because of The disaster of Globalist run Biden administration, the U.S. dollar is collapsing as world currency. Massive food shortage, destroying energy sector, mass migration, mass crime,
Hundreds of billions in corrupt payments laundered through Ukraine. Schooling is now pedophile grooming and hate your country hour. Yes many RINO’S are involved. But destroying the Constitution and the Country is Democrats/Globalist policy.
Razor, there’s always Florida for you. Close but no cigar. And you offer no supporting facts, no sources, no support except your wild rhetoric of the rant.
From Ballotpedia: “As of September 24, 2023, there are 22 Republican trifectas, 17 Democratic trifectas, and 11 divided governments where neither party holds trifecta control.
As of September 24, 2023, there are 24 Republican triplexes, 20 Democratic triplexes, and 6 divided governments where neither party holds triplex control.”
In the last nine years, Illinois had a Republican Governor for four of them. We have never been soft on taxes and corruption, as you indicated which just seems a weird conclusion given your other beliefs.
“Your lie about prosperity under democratic rule is obvious to all but the brainwashed.” Actually, I quoted WIKI, you can look it up. But how about The Balance, rated not biased and highly factual who rounded up this info: “Many analyses look at which party is best for the economy. A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Democratic presidents since World War II have performed much better than Republicans. On average, Democratic presidents grew the economy by 4.4% each year versus 2.5% for Republicans.”
And: “A study by Princeton University economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson found that the economy performs better when the president is a Democrat. They report that “by many measures, the performance gap is startlingly large.” Between Truman and Obama, growth was 1.8% higher under Democrats than Republicans.”
However, “A Hudson Institute study found that the six years with the best growth were evenly split between Republican and Democrat presidents.” They even have a chart, by President: *https://www.thebalancemoney.com/democrats-vs-republicans-which-is-better-for-the-economy-4771839*
I am sorry that you are wrong and can’t prove differently. It was easy. However, if your choice is to discount the truth, discount all sources of the truth, well —– guess that’s how you got there to begin with.
The world would be a dismal place without liberal minded citizens. That does not mean that such liberal minded folk are any good at running governments; they truly are not! With promises of equality and utopian society, today’s liberal minded citizens continue to believe the lies and deceits from Progressives who have taken control of the Media and the Democrat Party. All of a sudden no one knows if they are male or female, ethnic backgrounds mean more than merit of ability for jobs and everything is racist. How in Hell did we allow this to happen to our society? Portland should be a major wake up call for those who have been deceived into thinking they are “woke”.
Robin is like an oreo cookie. I like the top and bottom, but that middle is just sugary bullshit…..
Yes, a dismal place, as would the place without tighty-whitey consistently constipated conservatives.
Robin, I am a liberal, however really not far left but right on the money and left of center on social issues. I am male, have no issue with gays folks, question this trans stuff buy want all people to be created equal. Ethnic backgrounds mean a lot to me, not to my kids, it’s a generational thing that I wonder where you came from. Still not fully assimilated as my kids are. I had grandparents that come over, my wife’s father was naturalized and our parents had strong feelings about Germans, less so about Japanese, but still.
Portland was in trouble long before woke, should be a wake up call, but does not diminish the value of woke, politically correct, or what I call: treating others as you would like to be treated. You included.
Frank you’re a very good liar. You even convinced yourself of your commie propaganda. Yes I said commie. You lefties are more communist than Castro. And that’s because he’s dead. A good commie is a dead one. Of national causes of course. Don’t want anyone saying that I’m threatening. Wink wink.