New York City may require hotels to have ‘license to operate’ soon

FILE – The New Yorker Hotel sign glows at dusk, Wednesday, April 17, 2013 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

NEW YORK — In New York City, you need a license to cut hair, work as a tour guide or operate a doggy day care. But you do not need one to run a hotel.

That’s likely going to change after city lawmakers passed legislation Wednesday that would require hotels to get a license and maintain it by complying with a slate of new rules on day-to-day operations, from how often rooms are cleaned to who can staff the front desk.

If signed into law by the mayor — whose office said he supports the bill — advocates say the bill will reduce criminal activity, increase cleanliness and service levels, and improve labor standards at New York City’s roughly 700 hotels.

They run the gamut from luxury five-star venues in Manhattan, where rooms cost upward of $1,000 a night, to budget inns in the outer boroughs.

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Most major U.S. cities, including Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles, have some form of hotel permit, but in the Big Apple, hotels are regulated only by separate business, health and building regulations.

“There is desperate need for regulation,” City Council Member Julie Menin, a Manhattan Democrat and the bill’s sponsor, told lawmakers ahead of the vote, citing an example of a hotel that received complaints but that the city couldn’t shut down.

Under the proposed law, front desk staff, housekeepers and bellhops will have to be employed directly, rather than subcontracted. They’ll be entitled to a panic button system to be able to quickly alert a security guard if something goes wrong. Menin said that the rules on subcontracting would increase accountability by hotel owners “instead of shifting responsibility to third parties.”

For guests, the bill sets a floor for service: continuous coverage from a security guard and front desk operator, fresh linens upon request, and daily room cleaning unless a guest asks not to be disturbed. Following the pandemic, many hotels across the U.S. cut costs by cleaning rooms less than once per day, or only when a guest asked.

When first proposed, the bill was supported by the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the union for hotel workers in the city, but faced strong pushback from some hotel owners.

In response, more sweeping regulations on the use of subcontractors were scaled back.

The bill passed Wednesday will grandfather in existing subcontracts, exempt hotels with fewer than 100 rooms from subcontracting rules, and allow all hotels to continue subcontracting a range of secondary roles such as parking valets, food workers, and specialty cleaners like people who wash windows, marble floors or aquariums.

The final version of the bill also watered down the consequences of violating its provisions from the instant revocation of the hotel license for major violations to a 30-day grace period to correct the deficiencies.

The bill passed in a 45-4 vote.

American Hotel & Lodging Association interim CEO Kevin Carey called the bill a “special interest victory at the expense of small and minority-owned businesses.”

“The updated version of the bill — while including some concessions thanks to the advocacy efforts of hundreds of hotels and hospitality professionals — still unfairly and arbitrarily targets hotels with 100 or more rooms with regulations that have nothing to do with the bill’s stated goal of increasing health and safety,” Carey said in a prepared statement.