PHX Reporter

The COVID-19 crisis is keeping a 23-year-old furloughed front desk agent from her son.

Single mother Kylie Davis is one of thousands of the 6,800 Remington Hotels associates furloughed nationwide. She had expected to be reunited with her son in a new home last week but her furlough has delayed those plans.

T.J. Ransom, general manager of Hampton Inn Phoenix-Airport North where Davis worked, called on government to help Davis and many others like her.

Hampton Inn Phoenix-Airport North

"Please help our associates like Kylie and her son Jax Lincoln so their family can once again be reunited," Ransom said in a statement to PHX Reporter.

Remington Hotels, founded in 1968, is a hotel management company that also provides providing property management services. It's hospitality wing manages 86 hotels in 26 states across 17 brands.

Davis' son, Jax Lincoln, is 15 months old. Davis only recently took a job at Hampton Inn Phoenix-Airport North and that job meant what had been expected to be a temporary separation between her and her son.

"In order to help provide a better life for her son, she made a very difficult decision in January to leave her son with his grandparents in her hometown of Sierra Vista Arizona, so she could move to Phoenix to find better employment opportunities and a new home for them to live in," Ransom said.

Davis "was thrilled" to land an opportunity as a front desk agent, Ransom said.

"As her primary shifts would be working our front desk from Monday-Friday 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., it would give her the ability to provide for her son and have a stable work life to babysitting," Sloan said.

The COVID-19 pandemic smashed those plans.

"She was in the process of filling out rental applications for a new apartment so her and her son could be reunited last week," Ransom said. "Now due to the spread of COVID-19 she must delay this process until she once again has stable working hours so she can make the financial commitments needed for her own apartment."

COVID-19 is presenting Remington Hotels and other employers across the world with unprecedented challenge.

"Remington Hotels is struggling in the face of the coronavirus," Remington Hotels President and CEO Sloan Dean III said in his own statement to PHX Reporter.

The chain has been hit hard by COVID-19, which has sunk its business to "beyond depression levels" and Remington Hotels anticipates losses this year in the hundreds of millions, Dean said.

Remington Hotels expects hotels that it manages to run at 90% lower occupancy levels in April 2020, compared to the same month last year, Dean said.

"Most all of our 6800 associates are furloughed," he said, adding that the entire situation is a "disaster."

Priorities for the entire industry were presented to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, March 17 by the American Hotel and Lodging Association.

Those priorities are emergency assistance for employees, a workforce stabilization fund from the U.S. Treasury Department, preservation of business liquidity that would include $100 billion for employee retention and rehiring, and tax relief

"For many Americans in our sector, this health crisis will be compounded by economic hardship in the coming weeks and months," Dean said. "Congress must act now!! Time is essential as unemployment claims in hospitality will be in the millions."