ATLANTA – (LODGING Magazine) In a new byline for LODGING Magazine, cove Co-founder and Principal Patrick Chopson, AIA explains why hotel wildfire resilience is becoming a top investment priority, and why the properties that stay open after a fire are the ones that capture the demand.
For three days in January 2025, while the Eaton and Palisades fires burned across Los Angeles County, hotels in Pasadena, Glendale, and Burbank ran 83 percent occupancy, up from 63.7 percent the same days a year earlier, according to STR. Displaced families, adjusters, first responders, and crews needed rooms at once, and the hotels that could still take a reservation got them.
The demand stays. The hotel that burns does not. After the 2017 Tubbs Fire took the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country, the site sat mostly empty for six years. One side fills every open room in a market. The other takes rooms off it for years. The question for any hotel in fire country: Which side does this property land on the week after the fire?
Smoke gets into the air handlers. The utility cuts power on a red-flag day. The county orders an evacuation for the whole zone. Water pressure drops while every hydrant in the district draws, and the road in closes. Any of those takes an undamaged building off the market while debt service, taxes, the premium, and the brand standards keep running. Business interruption coverage typically carries a 48- to 72-hour waiting period, civil authority coverage commonly runs two to four weeks, and smoke without physical damage generally does not trigger a claim. Most of a wildfire closure lands on the owner.