By JUAN MCCARTNEY,Guardian Senior Reporter,juan@nasguard.com

Comfort Suites on Paradise Island joined the growing list of hotel properties around the country that have laid off workers in the past few months when it terminated 21 of its 101 employees yesterday.

It was the first time the company has laid off workers in its 18-year history, according to a resort official.

William Naughton, senior vice-president and managing partner, who founded Comfort Suites in 1991, called the layoffs "necessary" and blamed them on drastically reduced occupancy levels at the property.

"For the first time since Comfort Suites opened more than 18 years ago, we are forecasting an exceptionally soft winter season," he said in a statement yesterday.

"As an example of the severity of the downward trend, we now anticipate that the key winter season months will achieve 20 percent to 35 percent lower occupancies than in previous winter seasons. It is truly regrettable that the worldwide recession has caused such a prolonged and severe drop in occupancy that these staff reductions became necessary."

The move came on the same day that Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham remarked that the Atlantis Resort — Comfort Suites' neighboring property — had strong occupancy levels over the holiday season. Atlantis laid off at least 800 workers last November.

Comfort Suites General Manager Arthurita Butler said the layoffs were announced during a general staff meeting yesterday morning. She called the move "regrettable" but "necessary".

"We waited until the last possible moment to make this decision, hoping for an upturn in business, which unfortunately has not occurred. It is regrettable that this action became necessary due to the prolonged downturn in business, which now appears to extend through the entire winter season and into the spring of 2009," said Butler, who added that she has been with the company for 17 years. "This was an especially difficult decision for Comfort Suites because many of our employees have been with the hotel from the very beginning. This is the very first time that we ever had to lay off any employees."

Butler emphasized that the severance package given to each employee fully complies with the labor laws of The Bahamas, and will "equal or exceed the prevailing standards in the Nassau and Paradise Island hotel industry."

More than 1,200 workers have been laid off from the hotel sector in the past several months, including 12 employees of the Abaco Club at Winding Bay last week.

Those 12 workers accounted for about five percent of the resort's workforce. The Club employs just over 200 people.

When Kerzner International laid off 800 workers from its Atlantis Resort in November, the company said the reduction in staff was based on the fact that the resort had experienced significantly lower than usual occupancy levels due to the poor global economy.

Approximately 7,800 staff members remain employed and are expected to stay on assuming an occupancy level of around 64 percent continues.

Last month, Sandals, an all-inclusive resort on Cable Beach, laid off 150 people, while similar action was taken at Wyndham, the Sheraton and British Colonial Hilton.

Yesterday, the prime minister said he expected more layoffs in the hotel sector in the next several months, and reiterated earlier claims that the unemployment rate will rise to the lower double digits.

"I expect that the downsizing in the hotel sector has not been complete," Ingraham said. "If you go back to the speech I gave to the nation (in November), I forecasted that I expected unemployment to rise to the lower double digit levels, so that will not be surprising for me."

The most recent report from the Central Bank, which was released on Friday, said that while cumulative data for the first nine months of last year indicated a 5.8 percent improvement in hotel room revenues, New Providence properties experienced a 36.9 percent reduction in September revenues. In Grand Bahama, where September losses were estimated at 37.1 percent, room revenues declined on a year-to-year basis by 18.7 percent.