You are reading: Hotel Voice Summer 2025

Our union has decades of experience executing effective, attention-grabbing campaigns at hotels that temporarily turn away business and hurt a hotel’s boom line until management gives in and signs a contract. 

From effective boycotts to newsworthy media campaigns to corporate strategies that ensure a bad actor’s parent companies are impacted, our union knows how to make management cave.

If we don’t get what If we need at the bargaining table, we sure as hell will get it on the streets.

– RICH MAROKO, HTC President

Hilton Albany

Effective boycotts

In 2017, our union made the difficult decision to start a boycott and put up a picket line at the Hilton Albany. Negotiations had reached a standstill, with the employer sticking to egregious demands including stripping the workers of their pension and rejecting the union’s non-discrimination language.

The boycott campaign at the Hilton Albany had many sides – with our union’s team going after each source of the hotel’s revenue.

Wedding woes

We launched “Get Hitched without a Hitch,” a campaign to pull wedding business from the hotel. We convinced frustrated brides and grooms who had held their weddings at the hotel during our fight to go on the record about the headache caused by not re-booking their event and we attended local wedding expos to move future business.

Our union got frustrated grooms to go on the record about the headache caused by hosting their wedding at the hotel with an ongoing labor dispute, helping us turn even more business away during the fight.

Politicians stand with the workers

Albany being a political town, we asked our elected officials: “Which side are you on? The workers or the bosses?” In all, over 150 electeds agreed to support the workers, decimating the hotel’s fundraising and political galas. The boycott campaign at the Hilton Albany had many sides – with our union’s team going aer each source of the hotel’s revenue.

Capri Whitestone

Public shame

In 2013, our union launched a picket line at the Capri Whitestone, a motel in the Bronx. At the time, the motel rented rooms by the hour and attracted drug use, prostitution, and clientele who were there for other unsavory reasons.

Our union put up a 24-hour picket line to turn away guests. Picketers distributed leaflets and snapped photos for our boycott website, “Don’t cross this line.” On a portion of the website, “The Walk of Shame,” we publicized photos of the guests that crossed our picket line. If customers didn’t have the decency to turn away out of respect for our union members, our paparazzi-style approach got camera-shy guests to think twice about crossing our line.

Bad press for bad employers

During our strike, the New York Daily News reported on the filthy conditions and a bed bug infestation at the motel. Union members were awarded the right to wear hazmat suits due to the dangerous conditions.

Hot-sheets Bronx motel has loads of dirty laundry, bedbugs

“The Capri Whitestone Hotel must provide its employees with hazmat-style suits to protect the workers from infestations of the creepy crawlers, a labor arbitrator ruled Wednesday.”

Strategically stationed billboards

During a fight, our union launches ads about our strike or boycott in many forms – from traditional advertising like billboards to digital advertising including social media, search engines, and geo-targeted ads.

Consumer protections

We worked with Albany City officials to pass a consumer protection and notification law, which would require the hotel to start notifying guests of service disruptions, including the picket line, and begin offering refunds. The hotel caved and came to a deal soon after.

The Surrey

Most recently, our union has taken on the Surrey hotel, after the new owner and management company refused to rehire nearly 100 union members. In addition to a lawsuit filed by the hotel’s former employees, our union began a public campaign to hold the Surrey accountable – and we launched during one of the biggest celebrity events of the year: the Met Gala, blocks from the very hotel where this injustice is playing out.

Strategic timing

We strategically timed the launch of our “Shame on the Surrey” campaign, holding a rally on Met Gala Monday that drew significant media attention. One clip from New York Post about our action attracted tens of thousands of views online.

Mobile LED billboards

We’ve stationed LED trucks that display digital billboards outside of the Surrey and conferences where Corinthia executives were presenting. With “Shame on the Surrey” written across the truck in eye-catching red, management, customers, and members of the public can’t help but look our way.

Geo-targeted ads

We’ve put out geo-targeted ads that display on the devices of people nearby the Surrey hotel, including the hotel’s high-profile guests.

Coordinated actions

We’ve activated allies across the United States – leafleting in front of properties across the country that are owned by the same billionaires that own the Surrey.

Crashing industry conferences

In June, hundreds of union members rallied outside of the Boutique Hotel Investment Conference, where Corinthia Executives were headlining, to demand justice for the former Surrey hotel workers. Inside the conference, HTC’s General Organizer Samantha Klein and former Surrey worker Cheryl Gravesande took on Corinthia CEO Simon Casson in front of all his peers.

“I worked at the Surrey hotel for 32 years and when the Surrey closed, and opened back up, no one took us back. We were struggling – me and my family, me and all my coworkers – we struggled a lot with our bills. I was back in my mortgage… We sent in our resumes, but you refused to take us back. Could you tell us why you did that to us?”

– CHERYL GRAVESANDE, at the Boutique Hotel Investment Conference

Corporate Campaigns

Corporate campaigns directly target the corporate decision-makers (Owners, CEOs, General Managers), making sure that they personally feel the heat. We want to be impossible to ignore in the minds of the hotel executives who we are fighting. For obvious reasons, we are not going to reveal all of our tactics in a magazine that can be read by management. At a high level, waging corporate campaigns entails disrupting industry conferences and keynotes led by the bad actor hotels, publishing our messaging in specialized publications read by the industry, and informing Wall Street analysts of the financial impact to the business caused by our union’s actions.

Growing our fight team

Ahead of 2026, our union is expanding our capabilities by creating a position dedicated to leading these campaigns alongside our union’s organizers, researchers, lawyers, negotiators, and leadership. Our incoming Contract Fight Director, Mike Rodriguez, has experience leading strategic campaigns, including capital strategies, which involve organizing industry analysts, institutional investors, fund trustees, and regulators to hold hotels (and the Real Estate Investment Trusts [REITs] that own many of them) accountable for their illegal or risky activities.

The Boathouse

In the summer of 2011, workers at the Boathouse restaurant in Central Park walked off the job. The restaurant’s then-owner, Dean Poll, had engaged in an aggressive anti-union campaign, illegally firing union supporters, using intimidation tactics, performing surveillance, and harassing restaurant employees

Creative leaflets

During the Boathouse strike, “Keep our park clean” and “DUMP DEAN!” echoed throughout every corner of Central Park where union volunteers and strikers distributed leaflets. Our leaflet had a useful twist – we printed the story of our fight on detailed maps of Central Park, labeled with the dozens of restaurants and food stands that park visitors could eat at instead of the Boathouse. These maps, along with customized water bottles with the story of our fight, were sought after by tourists visiting the park in the heat and drew attention to our picket line.