Travel Roundup: Train Derailment Delays, Delta Sells Stock, Jay-Z's Hotel Shelved and More

Train derailment delays 3,000 Amtrak passengers -- Sixteen rail cars carrying automobiles derailed over the weekend near Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana and upset holiday travel for thousands of Amtrak passengers. Workers were struggling Monday night to rerail cars and reopen the Burlington Northern Santa Fe main line, which is used by Amtrak. The company had to cancel its eastbound Empire Builder train service between Seattle and Minneapolis on Sunday and its westbound service on Monday, an Amtrak spokeswoman said. She estimated about 3,000 to 4,000 passengers were affected by the cancellations or delays. Trains along the Empire Builder route were delayed up to 22 hours. A spokesman for Burlington Northern said the cause of the derailment is still under investigation. [Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer]

Delta sells $200 million of stock to pay taxes -- Delta Air Lines reported Monday that it sold almost $200 million of stocks earlier this month to pay for withholding taxes assessed on employee stock options. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Delta reported selling 18.2 million shares of common stock through an agreement with Citigroup Global Markets Inc. Proceeds of the sale were about $196 million, Delta reported, and the shares were not newly issued. After Delta acquired Northwest Airlines in October, it promised to give employees about 15 percent of company stock. [Source: Sacramento Business Journal]

Rapper Jay-Z's hotel hit by credit crunch -- Rap mogul Jay-Z's $66 million hotel in New York City has been shelved because his partner, Charles Blaichman, can't find a loan to fund the project. Jay-Z invested in J Hotels last year, hoping to build a high-end hotel in Chelsea, but Blaichman -- who is developing two other projects -- can't get the $370 million to get the projects going. Lack of financing is nothing new in New York, where around $5 billion of projects have broken down or been put on hold. [Source: AHN]

Starwood ends management of three hotels in Tahiti -- Starwood Hotels & Resorts Hawai'i & French Polynesia announced today that it will no longer manage the Sheraton Hotel Tahiti, Sheraton Moorea and Bora Bora Nui Resort & Spa beginning in 2009. Starwood will still manage the St. Regis Bora Bora Resort, Le Meridien Tahiti and Le Meridien Bora Bora. Starwood operated both the Sheraton Hotel Tahiti And the Sheraton Moorea since 2000 and the Bora Bora Nui Resort & Spa since 2002. [Source: Hotel Interactive]