National Archives - Checks and Balances Project

New Documents Raise Question of What Role Hotel Lobby’s Chair Played in Penn State Pay-to-Play Scheme

2017-06-23

Recently uncovered documents from the hotel lobby show that Penn State Professor John W. O’Neill was hired for pay-to-play academic research. According to the briefing book American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA) provided in 2014 to a meeting of its board of directors, the Professor was engaged to come up with a study with a… Read more »

C&BP Expands Probe of Hotel Lobby Influence To Univ. North Carolina, Florida International University and Rutgers

2017-04-20

New York Times Story Reveals Efforts by AHLA to Build Upon Pay-to-Play Research at Penn State Since October 2016, we’ve been investigating the relationship between Pennsylvania State University Professor John W. O’Neill and the hotel industry’s lobbying arm, the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA). Now, new reporting shows that AHLA has expanded its efforts… Read more »

Marriott’s Overseas Cash Pile Grows

2016-12-16

Will Hotel Lobby Giant Bring Money Home? The new, widely-popular, and more sustainable method of hospitality offered by home sharing is under attack by the hotel lobby. As we continue to examine the hotel lobby’s campaign, one giant of the industry keeps turning up. It’s the largest hotel chain in the world: Marriott International. Marriott… Read more »

Hotel Lobby President Katherine Lugar Refuses to Discuss Model Legislation to Tax Home Sharers

2016-11-21

C&BP Executive Director’s Questions Rebuffed at AH&LA Board Meeting. We traveled to New York City last week to pose some important questions directly to Katherine Lugar, the leader of the hotel lobby, about efforts to penalize the sustainable, home sharing economy. During a break at the American Hotel & Lodging Association’s (AH&LA) board meeting at… Read more »

Hotel Lobby Proposes $1.25 Billion Tax on Home Sharers

2016-11-9

Model Legislation by Hotel Lobby Also Proposes New Regulatory Scheme While Hotels Receive Billions in Corporate Welfare. As readers know by now, we’ve begun looking into the hotel industry’s efforts to slow the growth of the home sharing industry, a more sustainable form of travel. Only hours after we published a new report on how major… Read more »

Welfare Checks to Hotel Lobby Totaled $3.6 Billion Since 2008

2016-11-2

Luxury Hotels Got Especially Large Amounts When industries mature, they use expanding profits to grow their lobbying influence and obtain not just favorable policies, but government largess in a variety of forms. In our newly launched look into the hotel industry’s influence peddling, we’re quickly finding this industry is following the path worn by the… Read more »

Does Home Sharing Help to Build a Sustainable Economy?

2016-09-30

In short, there’s a legitimate case that the success of the new crop of sharing economy companies will help to drive the evolution of the U.S. economy onto more sustainable footing.