Students walk past a motel in downtown California, U.S. (Photographer: Bronte Wittpenn/Bloomberg)
(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Davin Patel’s parents ran a 20-room Holiday Motel in rural Georgia when he was growing up. The years he spent shadowing them as they went about their daily business, from checking in guests to tidying rooms, became the foundation for his own career as a motel manager. But none of this on-the-job training, nor any of his college classes, prepared Patel for a pandemic.