A bankruptcy filing is a bonanza for nosy people like me. The details of last week’s bankruptcy of The Greenbrier Resort, as reported by the Charleston Daily Mail, reveals some unusual assets the hotel owns:
• $3.9 million in books, pictures, antiques and other art objects;
• $21.4 million in machinery and fixtures—everything from a bowling alley to $252,514 worth of golf carts;
• $16,191 in firearms;
• $287,181 worth of vehicles, ranging from a 1954 fire truck to a fleet of pickup trucks and vans, two garbage trucks and a street sweeper;
• $648,508 of linens and $490,649 worth of uniforms; and
• 22 horses of unknown value.
In the filing, the resort claimed $141.7 million in assets and $107.4 million in liabilities. I’m no bankruptcy expert, but by my reckoning those numbers makes the hotel solvent and not a candidate for liquidation. But, again, I’m no expert.
Simultaneous with the bankruptcy filing, the property’s owner, CSX Corp., signed an agreement to sell the hotel to Marriott International in what struck me as a very cushy deal. In terms reported in the press, CSX will give Marriott as much as $50 million to operate the hotel for two years. Marriott will then pay between $60 million and $110 million over the next seven years to finalize the deal. Is my arithmetic faulty, or may Marriott end up buying a four-star, 720-room iconic resort sitting on 6,500 acres of land for as little as $10 million? Now that’s a sweet deal.

The ninth annual Resort Conference scheduled for May 3-5 will not take place at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, FL as scheduled, but instead will be a virtual conference with webinar sessions scheduled for May 4, 6, 11 and 13. The reasons are certainly obvious. This industry, in particular luxury resorts, has taken a brutal beating and attendance, which sagged last year in San Diego, was surely down even more. The official explanation:
“At the request of resort executives who wanted to attend the meeting but could not allocate the time this year, HSMAI and the University of Denver have committed to making the content available to a much wider audience through the virtual format,” said Robert A. Gilbert, CHME, CHA, president and CEO of HSMAI. “Excellent content has already been developed for this year’s Resort Conference and is designed especially for executives dealing with the current economic environment.”
The webinar series will be offered free to the first 100 qualified resort professionals who register. More information can be found here. The announcement thanks sponsors and the PGA National Resort, which it says will host the 10th annual event next year.
I can only imagine what it took to cancel at this late juncture and how bad attendance must have been. It will be interesting to see how this concept works and if enough people really are willing to participate online. Who knows, we may see more of this going forward.

Monday’s closing of the Holiday Inn in Columbus, OH—known as “the Holiday Inn on the Lane”—probably isn’t newsworthy to anyone who doesn’t wear, or bleed, Scarlet and Gray, but to me, it’s a sad day. The hotel on Lane Avenue across the street from the Horseshoe, Ohio State’s football stadium, hosted a raucous and well known party before, during and after every home football game for as long as this 1995 OSU graduate can remember. Called Heiney Gate, and I have no idea why, the party was drunken and wild revelry at its finest. There was always plenty of live music, kegs of beer and hundreds (probably thousands) of students and alumni in front of the Holiday Inn.
A local story says Campus Partners paid $19 million for the hotel, which will be converted into a dormitory to house nearly 500 students after underoing $6 million in renovations. I hope there are some enterprising students who take it upon themselves to reinvent the tailgating tradition in the same location.
This may not be news to many, but if you know Ohio State football, you know this hotel.