Joe Jaeger, the largest single owner of hotels in New Orleans, said he is in survival mode after suspending operations and furloughing more than 500 workers at his main hotel group because of the nationwide shut-down to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

The hundreds of furloughed employees worked in Jaeger's "J Collection" group of 19 hotels, which includes the 207-room Jung hotel and Residences on Canal Street, as well as a dozen boutique hotels in the French quarter, such as The Bourbon on Orleans Street and the Melrose Mansion on Esplanade Avenue. The group also includes hotels outside the city, such as the Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, which Jaeger's MCC Group acquired last year.

The hotels have been closed since this weekend with just security and a handful of other employees on site.

Jaeger said that he is also discussing with partners about suspending operations at both the Omni Royal and Omni Riverside hotels, in which he has a half share. The Omni hotels have a combined total of more than 500 rooms.

Each Omni hotel had only one guest on Monday, he said.

New Orleans developer Jaeger puts his 19 hotels under one brand New Orleans developer Joe Jaeger has put all 19 of his hotels under one brand to market the eclectic group of lodgings as "uniquely Southern."

The Jaeger hotels are among the many tourism-related businesses facing an uncertain future during the crisis.

According to an Oxford Economic study produced for the American Hotel and Lodging Association, Louisiana has more than 49,000 workers in hotels or jobs that support those hotels. Many if not all of them are facing the prospect of losing those jobs during the shut down.

Nationwide, the study estimated, some four million workers are out-of-work in the hotel sector, with visitor-dependent cities like New Orleans especially hard hit.

Businesses like the Hampton Inn in La Place, owned and operated by small business franchisee Vimal Patel, also said over the weekend that it had to shutter operations and let staff go.

Employees of Jaeger's J Collection group were gathered at various locations over the weekend where they were told they were being furloughed and were given help to sign up for unemployment.

Jaeger said he also has set up a grant program whereby his charitable foundation will pay out $150 a week for eight weeks to hourly employees, and $500 a week for six weeks to salaried employees under terms that won't interfere with their ability to receive unemployment benefits. Most employees also will keep their health insurance through to the end of May.

"We have got to figure out a way to ease the emotional and financial pain," said Jaeger. "Obviously, we want to hire employees back; you can't do it without your people and especially the hourly folks who clean the rooms and interact with the customers. But it's hard to tell how long this will go on and how much damage this is going to do to the global economy."

He said his non-hotel business also faces a similar suspension and furloughing arrangement, as much of it is involved in providing services to the hotel sector.

Jaeger said he is negotiating with his local banks, including Hancock Whitney Corp. and Hibernia Bank, which like many banks have said they are instituting relief measures, like deferred loan payments for businesses and individual customers in order to help them get through the crisis.

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But Jaeger noted also that many hotels have big mortgages that can be sold to the kind of investors who specialize in targeting businesses that have fallen on hard times.

"There are people out there who like to capitalize on other people's misery," said Jaeger.

He said lawyers are poring over documents to minimize any chance the "vulture funds" might try to foreclose on any of his properties.

"There are a lot of unanswered questions," Jaeger said. "There has already been a big movement in these vulture funds raising money for this, and it's a model they've used before in times of recession. So, we need to get things in place here.

"We're trying to figure out a worst-case strategy of how we're going to survive as a company."