If you've been following the story of the Biden border crisis and its downstream effects on America's larger cities, particularly New York, you're probably aware that many of the Big Apple's once-elegant tourist hotels have been taken over and converted to migrant housing. This has led to a number of headaches for legal residents of the city and elected officials alike. But one thing we haven't heard too much about is how the owners of these hotels feel about the situation. In at least one case, they aren't too happy at all. That's the situation with Marriott International, which had been preparing to launch a new hotel in Queens in cooperation with a franchise owner named Pride Hospitality Group in 2022. But only months before the grand opening after eight years of construction work, the franchise owner cut a lucrative deal with the city to house migrants there instead. Now Marriott is suing Pride Hospitality Group for breach of contract and seeking an order for them to stop using Marriott's signage. (NY Post)

Marriott International has filed a $2.6 million federal lawsuit against a hotel in Queens for becoming a migrant shelter in violation of its franchise agreement.

The hotel chain claims the owners of the Pride Hotel in Jamaica had a 2015 deal with Marriott to operate a dual-branded Aloft and Element hotel at 149-03 Archer Avenue, according to the complaint filed last week in the Southern District of New York.

Marriott alleged the hotel’s owner, Pride Hospitality Group, made a “lucrative” agreement with the city to house migrants and asylum seekers “just months before” its slated Nov. 1 opening, after eight years of construction. In doing so, it broke the agreement and gave up the right to use Marriott branding.

To be clear, it's not that Pride Hospitality Group didn't have the legal right to modify their contracts and go in a new direction. They shouldered the vast majority of the construction costs and they were supposed to be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the hotel once it opened. They were simply taking advantage of Marriott's vast, global brand name recognition, hoping to draw more trade to the facility, which is located close to JFK Airport.

The problem is that the branding in question included many signs and displays, some of them quite large, on and around the property reading "Marriott." If the people at Pride Hospitality Group believed they could make better money as a migrant shelter, that was their choice to make, but Marriott didn't want their brand associated with that. They ordered Pride to remove all of the Marriott branding from the facility. But they refused to comply and kept accepting new shipments of migrants from the city. The situation has now reached a boiling point and a lawsuit is underway.

It's not that I don't recognize the temptation of having the municipal government dangle a large sum of money in front of someone in exchange for some sort of social engineering program such as migrant housing. They would never have to worry about empty rooms and the city pays generous rates to the hotels. (It's amazing how generous they can be with your money, isn't it?) But this was scheduled to be a fully modern, state-of-the-art hotel catering to travelers near a major airport located in a top tourist destination. 

You don't need me to tell you what is already happening there and what will continue to happen. Those migrants are going to trash that hotel completely. That's another reason that Marriott certainly wouldn't want their brand associated with it. Drug use, garbage, and human waste will be the order of the day. We've already seen it happen at too many New York hotels that were essentially seized for migrant housing. The entire neighborhood in Queens will be negatively impacted as a result. Marriott may get their money back and have the signs removed, but that was supposed to be a hotel that would attract upper-end visitors who would pay top dollar and help shore up Gotham's fading tourist industry. Now it will be just another dump. It's sad to see.