The events are two of the biggest of the year at McCormick Place, which has already lost more than 20 trade shows, meetings and conventions to the concerns surrounding the outbreak. Those would have accounted for more than 250,000 hotel room nights.

"I wouldn’t say it’s a body blow," Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said of the announced cancellations, adding that the city had seen many over the course of the past few weeks and expected to see more. "Obviously it has an effect, an impact, but it’s understandable under the circumstances. I’m guessing that some of these contracts have trigger points that if you don’t cancel by X date, you owe Y money, I think that’s what we’re going to start seeing with these May conventions. . . .The bottom line is, everybody needs to be safe."

The National Restaurant Association was expected to have around 57,000 attendees and generate almost the same number of hotel room night stays, according to the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority, which owns and operates McCormick Place. The oncology group's projected attendance was 42,500, and the event would have accounted for more than 155,000 hotel room nights, according to MPEA. That's more hotel stays than any McCormick Place event canceled so far.

Those losses come after at least 14 downtown Chicago hotels have closed amid the pandemic. Large properties including the Loews Chicago Hotel in Streeterville, the Omni Chicago Hotel, the Park Hyatt and the Peninsula are among the closures.

With the loss of two key May shows and a significant drop in leisure travel, it's becoming less likely that many of those hotels would reopen until at least June to try to capture the normally lucrative summer tourism traffic.

In a move to soften the sharp blow coronavirus has dealt the hotel market, the city and state said yesterday they plan to rent out thousands of local hotel rooms to help house coronavirus patients and exposed health care workers. That won't do much long term but could help some hotels keep a skeleton crew of staffers employed and cover property tax obligations, said Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association President and CEO Michael Jacobson.

The IHLA is pressing the state of Illinois to follow the city of Chicago's lead and push back deadlines to collect hotel tax payments. The association estimates hotels statewide could lay off as many as 120,000 workers in the weeks ahead if the economic shutdowns associated with the outbreak continue.

Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels said it will furlough or significantly reduce the schedules of two-thirds of its U.S. corporate employees in a wide-ranging cost-cutting measure.

"We recognize the critical importance of the show to the industry and we know that this will come as a disappointment to those who had planned for months to attend," the Washington, D.C.-based National Restaurant Association said in a statement on its website. "While it is not the outcome we wanted, amid all the uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety of our attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, vendor partners and our own staff is paramount."

Major events at McCormick Place in the three months ended in May were projected to generate $460 million in local economic impact, according to tourism bureau Choose Chicago.

A.D. Quig contributed.