NYC Officials Want to Ban Popular Tourist Attraction
NYC Officials Want to Ban Popular Tourist Attraction
Photo by Bee on Unsplash
https://www.fodors.com/world/north-america/usa/new-york/new-york-city/experiences/news/nyc-horse-carriage-tragedy-renews-calls-to-ban-central-park-rides
An 18-year-old tourist died after a horse-drawn carriage accident in Central Park, renewing calls to ban the popular New York City attraction.
In a tragic accident last week, an 18-year-old lost his life after a horse bolted during a horse-drawn carriage ride in New York City. Romanch Mahajan was visiting the U.S. with his mother, father, and younger brother when the incident occurred. The accident has renewed calls to ban horse-drawn carriage rides in the city, a popular tourist attraction.
The Mahajan family came to the U.S. to celebrate Romanch’s high school graduation and admission to college. They visited the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, and the 9/11 Memorial, and were enjoying a horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park on Wednesday, the third day of their trip. Near the end of the ride, the driver got down to take a picture of the family, and that’s when the horse became spooked and bolted. Romanch’s mother, Priya, fell out, and Romanch jumped to help her. But he hit his head on the pavement and died in the hospital that night.
The carriage toppled over after hitting another carriage, and his father, Deepak, brother Maanik, and mother Priya suffered minor injuries.
The Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents carriage drivers, said that the driver was at least “an arm’s length away from the horse.” Vice President Alexander Kemp said, “This is unacceptable. A driver is not supposed to leave the carriage to take photos — ever. We support a full investigation.”
The incident comes at a time when the industry is facing increased scrutiny after a series of mishaps. Earlier this month, a horse ate a plant poisonous to horses and died in the park. Last month, a horse collided with another carriage, and in January, a spooked horse ran into traffic and struck cars.
Horse-drawn carriage rides were briefly suspended following the death and resumed on Tuesday. The owner of the carriage suspended the driver, and the horse was retired.
Deepak Mahajan, the teenager’s father, said that the incident should be taken seriously. “It took my son’s dream away,” the New York Times reported.
Possible End of an Era
For years, animal rights groups have advocated for the activity to be suspended. They argue that keeping horses on busy city streets amounts to animal abuse because they can be startled by people and cars, potentially causing harm to both animals and humans. They also contend that city traffic is stressful for the animals and forces them to work in inhumane conditions.
Romanch was the first person to die in such an accident since the carriages were introduced 150 years ago. The Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, has also called for a ban on the industry, citing eight horse-related incidents in the park since May 2025. Horses cannot safely share space with pedestrians, joggers, and cyclists, it says. The conservancy called Romanch’s death an “unacceptable cost of an antiquated industry operating in the middle of one of the most heavily used public spaces in America.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani also stated that the council would work with animal welfare advocates and the industry to “deliver a just transition that protects workers while ending horse-drawn carriages in Central Park once and for all.”
A proposal called Ryder’s Law to ban horse-drawn carriages was already under review before the fatal incident. Council member Christopher Marte said that the legislation will be renamed Romanch’s Law in memory of the teenager. Marte said when the bill was introduced, “It takes one second of a horse losing its concentration to run off and injure a driver, a passenger, or just a pedestrian. We have to end it not only for the horses, because they’re in extreme conditions, but also for the people around them.”
The council will take up the bill in July.
Meanwhile, separate legislation introduced to the council proposes, among other things, improved working conditions and the installation of hitching posts. The carriage industry supports the measure and has been calling for hitching posts so drivers can safely secure horses and prevent them from bolting unexpectedly. The labor union argues that horse-drawn carriage rides are a beloved New York tradition and that eliminating them entirely would lead to job losses and hurt small business owners.
Making the right hotel hiring decisions is tough because the evidence of success comes later
https://hotelsmag.com/news/making-the-right-hotel-hiring-decisions-is-tough-because-the-evidence-of-success-comes-later/
Story contributed by Hideki Hayashi, founder of Pulse Hospitality Group.
Ownership hires senior managers based on what it can see: a record that presents well, a confident interview, professional composure, and a reputation that arrives ahead of the person. These are the things weighed; they are also the things a person can learn to shape deliberately over the course of a career.
The candidate who makes the people around them better rarely looks like the obvious hire.
The people closest to the guest trust this person enough to act without being told. The understanding the staff builds about returning guests survives the leadership transitions this manager oversees. The leaders they develop continue running the department long after the manager has moved on. The operation functions differently because that person was there.
An interview does not reliably reveal that difference. The evidence arrives later.
A harder evaluation
This is the challenge beneath every senior hiring decision. What a manager presents is straightforward to evaluate. What a manager produces is much harder to assess within any timeline short enough to influence the hiring decision itself. When one thing can be measured immediately, and the other takes years to become clear, the immediate signal inevitably carries more weight.
Over enough hiring cycles, this becomes a pattern. Presentation operates on the same timeline as interviews, annual reviews, conference appearances and promotion decisions. Production operates on an entirely different schedule. Building trust, preserving operational knowledge, developing future leaders and maintaining standards through periods of change leave no visible mark while the work is underway.
The challenge for ownership is that the timeline does not align with the decision. A senior manager can be judged long before the operation they shaped can be judged.
Four years is a useful illustration of a general manager’s tenure. It is long enough to launch initiatives, improve the metrics that are easiest to measure, receive recognition and move on. Some of what that tenure produced becomes visible near its end—a team that has steadied, or one that has started to fray. But the stronger effects, good and bad, often surface only after the person has left. By the time the operation reveals what the tenure actually built, the evaluation window has already closed.
Shorter tenures compress the problem rather than solving it. A tenure of one or two years ends before most consequences have had time to emerge, so whatever it sets in motion becomes visible only after the departure, with little during the tenure to connect it back. The shorter the period, the smaller the window ownership has to observe whether decisions strengthened the operation or simply improved the metrics that respond quickly. The briefest tenures are the hardest to evaluate of all—too short to understand while they happen, too far behind by the time their effects appear.
Much of what a tenure leaves behind stays behind. A standard that was allowed to slip does not restore itself. Some conditions settle in deeply. No single arrival reverses them. They are worked loose slowly, over years, by people who never saw the original conditions and have no way to measure how far things have drifted.
The inheritance
The next leadership team inherits the result. What ownership receives during a transition is rarely a clean account of the previous tenure. It inherits the accumulated consequences of that tenure, arriving years after the decisions that created them.
The evidence rarely appears in a form that points back to its source. A repeat guest who once knew the staff by name returns to a row of unfamiliar faces. Another must explain a preference the property had understood for years. A department that once ran itself now requires constant intervention to accomplish what it previously handled alone. Nothing in these moments identifies the decision underneath—and yet that is where they began, years earlier. The connection exists. The delay obscures it.
What the guest notices is not a dramatic change but a quiet absence. A loyal guest is welcomed accurately but without familiarity—the profile remains intact, but the understanding has disappeared. It rarely generates a complaint. Over time, it produces a guest who returns a little less often.
That delay creates a structural blind spot. By the time the operation reveals whether a senior manager strengthened or weakened the property, the manager may already be leading elsewhere, while the ownership group evaluating the next candidate is relying on the same signals it relied on before.
When the cycle repeats
Luxury hospitality operates on timelines that exceed individual leadership tenures. Conditions created under one period of leadership often become visible only under another, making them difficult to trace back even when the consequences themselves are obvious. Each leadership transition appears independent. In reality, many of the consequences are simply arriving on schedule.
The property absorbs the cost without recognizing it as one. Confidence arrives immediately; stability arrives later. A manager who presents well produces the first. A manager who truly leads produces the second—in-experienced employees who stay, in guest relationships that survive leadership transitions, and in standards that hold without constant intervention from above. Ownership hires one while hoping for the other, and the difference becomes visible only after the hiring decision can no longer be revisited.
The managers who invest in being seen are not the problem. People respond rationally to the signals organizations reward, and the industry rewards visibility. The behavior is understandable. The measurement is the issue. As long as presentation remains easier to evaluate than production, the industry will continue selecting for the former while overlooking the latter.
An interview answers one question. It does not answer the one that matters: whether the property has any dependable way to see what a manager is contributing—or costing—long after the interview is over.
The best managers leave evidence that develops over time. It is found in the people who stay, in standards preserved through leadership changes, and in guests who continue returning long after the leaders who first knew them have turned over twice. These are the outcomes that appear long after the numbers everyone watches—and they are far harder to fake.
A property that maintains its standards year after year, through leadership changes, is not the product of a single hiring decision. What sets it apart is knowing how to recognize what its best people are contributing before the consequences become visible.
Ownership can see the candidate. Seeing the outcome before it arrives is the harder task—and the one that ultimately determines the property’s future.
Capella taps Feisal Jaffer as chief development officer
https://hotelsmag.com/news/capella-taps-feisal-jaffer-as-chief-development-officer/?
Capella Hotel Group has appointed Feisal Jaffer as chief development officer. Jaffer will lead the group’s global development as it accelerates the next phase of expansion across its Capella and Patina brands and will help shape hospitality-focused real estate platforms.
From 2014 to 2019, Jaffer served as SVP, acquisitions & development at Pontiac Land Group, where he worked closely alongside Capella on several projects: he led the Fari Islands development in the Maldives, which gave rise to Patina Maldives; drove the Sydney Sandstones bid and subsequent development that became Capella Sydney; and was part of the founding team that conceived and launched Patina Hotels & Resorts.
Most recently, as global head of LXR Hotels & Resorts at Hilton Worldwide, Jaffer led the brand’s strategic growth, scaling from a single property to over 40 hotels operating and in the pipeline across five continents, while also representing Hilton’s luxury brands—Waldorf Astoria, Conrad and LXR — across the Americas. Earlier, he held senior investment and development roles at Host Hotels & Resorts, in a joint venture with GIC Real Estate, and at Fairmont-Raffles Hotels International, structuring and closing more than US$2.5 billion in transactions over a career spanning nearly three decades.
“As we build the team to match our ambitions, Feisal brings deep relationships across institutional and private capital, a sharp commercial mind, and a genuine understanding of our brands. He will drive our global development strategy—expanding our portfolio in key markets, building lasting partnerships with owners, and creating enduring value across the business. With Capella’s reputation stronger than ever and Patina gaining considerable momentum, I look forward to what we will accomplish together,” said Roland Fasel, President, Capella Hotel Group.
“Capella and Patina represent something rare: industry-defining brands with genuine soul. The years I spent working alongside Evan and the Kwee family taught me what luxury hospitality can be,” said Jaffer. “To return at such a pivotal moment —to help advance the Group’s global development under Roland’s leadership and contribute to the family’s investment and real estate interests— is a tremendous privilege. I am truly excited to build the next generation of Capella and Patina destinations around the world.”
Jaffer joins at an inflection point for the group as Patina Hotels & Resorts builds on Patina Osaka’s entry into Japan and prepares to debut in China with Patina Tianjin. Capella also plans to double its portfolio by 2030, with Capella Nanjing anticipated to open by the end of the year, followed by Riyadh and Florence.
Feelings and experiences make for a true luxury hotel stay, Marriott exec says
In current development environment, hotel conversions are a vital part of growth
https://www.costar.com/article/1530001112/feelings-and-experiences-make-for-a-true-luxury-hotel-stay-marriott-exec-says?
By Bryan Wroten
NEW YORK — “What experience can I have that I can't get anywhere else, and how do I feel about that experience?”
That is how Dana Jacobsohn, chief development officer, North America luxury brands and global mixed-use at Marriott International, describes how the luxury hotel experience is evolving.
It’s not about going into a restaurant with white tablecloths and stuffy service, she said in a video interview at the NYU International Hospitality Investment Forum. It’s about where the food is from and how creative it is.
"Luxury, to me, is how it makes you feel," she said.
Marriott has been leaning in on the luxury hotel space for many years, Jacobsohn said. The way it has accomplished this is by offering strong and compelling brands across all segments and having a dedicated luxury team focused on performance, development and owners’ needs. That team is focused on, among other things, design, operations, sales, marketing, and food and beverage.
With luxury hotel demand at such a high, Marriott has to offer its customers the product they’re looking for, she said. It also has to offer developers the right opportunities, meaning they are economically feasible. Luxury hotels are generally co-located with a residential component to help the economics of the deal.
“For our customers, we just have to make sure that we're building what they want in the places they want, that we're finding new opportunities, new experiences for our almost 300 million Bonvoy customers,” she said.
Given the difficult development environment, hotel conversions are an important part Marriott’s growth strategy, and that includes luxury properties, Jacobsohn said.
“A conversion is exciting,” she said. “We can take over very quickly, but the key is for a luxury conversion, it has to be in the right location, and we have to find an opportunity where the product meets our luxury brand standards.”
For example, Marriott is converting the Resort at Kapalua Bay to the St. Regis brand following a renovation, she said. The company is operating it now under a white label. Marriott converted another luxury property as well, the Resort at Turtle Bay now associated with the Ritz-Carlton brand. As a conversion project, the properties can enter Marriott’s ecosystem quickly.
New luxury development projects can take years to reach fruition, but what helps keep a luxury hotel relevant is not just what the hotel looks like but how it makes someone feel, Jacobsohn said.
“It’s more about how it makes you and me and the customer feel when we show up. That’s true luxury,” she said. “That includes what it looks like, but it’s when you walk into a luxury hotel, what is the scent? Does it remind you of something? Is that nostalgic? Is that a scent that resonates with you?”
It’s about how the wellness activities make a hotel guest feel, whether they feel like they’re taking care of themselves, she said. Another such factor is the community feel of public spaces such as the lobby.
“As we look ahead, we try very hard to be relevant to what is important to the customer at that time and place,” she said.
For more from Marriott's Dana Jacobsohn, watch the video embedded above or listen to the podcast below.
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