Margaret Gordon, a Melbourne-based Kiwi who works as a video producer for The Age, offers a snapshot of her two weeks in managed isolation at an Auckland hotel. The new Hotel Council Aotearoa, representing about half the country s 330-plus hotels, says many have barely survived summer. January should have been their busiest month with occupancies around 90 per cent, said strategic director James Doolan. Instead, with a few days of January remaining, most had only 40 to 60 per cent of their rooms occupied, and had been forced to slash about 20 per cent from their room tariffs to fill even those. That meant their overall room revenue was down about 50 per cent, but they still had to pay property-related costs like rents, rates, insurance, electricity and servicing debt.