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Zihan Mei
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Translation: https://sites.google.com/view/hotliernet/blogs (script pasted)

Four Aspects You Should Think About When Operating Hotels During COVID
Tracing back to the time before COVID, how’s your hotel occupancy? Was that
higher than what you have now? I am sure the answer is yes. Researchers found
that COVID-19 has impacted the hospitality industry drastically. In 2020, hotel rooms
remained empty; it was the year with the lowest hotel occupancy on record. This
should not surprise you. Covid broke out at the beginning of 2020 in our country.
Everyone had no clue about how to deal with this at that time. We had an order to
“shelter in place” for months. Many services industries in California, like
restaurants, remained closed until June last year. Linking this pandemic to our
industry, hospitality, hoteliers faced dramatic losses in revenue and threats of closing
their business since the pandemic.

Now is the year 2022, we have lived under COVID for two years and had a clear
picture of COVID-19. We learned its transmission means and developed coping
strategies. People resume their normal activities and begin to travel around. It is a
great opportunity for us, hoteliers, to revive our industry and take it back on
track.

However, COVID is still part of our life. We wear masks every day, get vaccines
and boosters, and keep social distance from each other. This pandemic changed
many peoples’ lifestyles. In order to recover our losses from this “disaster,” we
need to take action to make our rooms match people’s needs and want.

Thinking from this perspective, we first need to understand what guests need and
what features they are looking for in their hotel selection. Previous research
found that people would only go advance to other needs when their desire for safety
has been satisfied. This means that our potential guests would not look into other
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features if the hotel could not satisfy their need for health. Thus, the most important goal
of our hotels is to ensure people’s well-being during their stay, especially during this
infectious disease.

How to make sure our hotels can provide a healthy environment for guests? Here are
four things to consider:

#1 Hygiene Control
Hygiene is always the most important factor to think about during infectious diseases.
Everyone would like to live in a clean room. Especially during COVID; they look for
sanitization and disinfection when selecting hotels for their trips.

In order to implement hygiene control, let’s recount how the COVID-19 virus is
transmitted. The virus not only transmits through an infected person’s cough and
sneeze but also could be transmitted after touching infected objects. With this in
mind, you should understand the importance of sanitization during the COVID
era. Apart from disinfecting guest rooms regularly and keeping front-line employees in
good health, some small details can also impress your customers. For example, have
hand sanitizers in guest rooms and limit the number of guests on each floor. However,
these measures are only the basic requirements. We also need to think about
other highlights like providing personal protective equipment at the reception desks.
This provides convenience for people who forget or lose their masks.

In addition, like common sense, the hotel should provide accessible soap and
disinfectant solution dispensers, and it would be nice to have operable windows in each
room to provide natural airflow. These features decrease the probability of
transmission and keep guests safe.

Small details are what make some hotels stand out. People always like things that are
well-prepared. When you can protect your guests better than others, you are winning at
the starting line as people are more willing to choose your hotels for their travel.
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#2 Health Communication

Have you ever had the concern of someone ignoring the safety protocols? This
concern you have would also worry your customers. We not only should
implement safety protocols but also need to remind our guests about them all the
time. Having multilingual brochures on safety and security in guest rooms allow
your guests to better understand the safety concerns and their countermeasures.
This enables them to behave cautiously and stay away from dangers.
Furthermore, having information signs in the public area would also be a great
reminder for guests to be cautious. With these means to inform guests about the
safety concerns, the majority of people will pay attention to their behaviors and
maintain a healthy environment together with us.

With various options, people prefer to live in a hotel where their health has been
prioritized. Do you want to live on the same floor with people who have tested
positive? I hope you care about this issue and provided an answer of no.
Preventing infected people to transmit the virus to others, we can ask guests to
fill out a health questionnaire with infectious disease screening questions during
or prior to their check-ins. With the feedback, you can bring guests to different
stairs according to their health conditions and preferences. For example, the
second floor can only accept people infected with COVID.

#3 Medical Preparedness
Many people tested positive for COVID unexpectedly. The probability of getting
sick increases significantly during the COVID era. We need to be ready for every
situation. In particular when there are elder guests with chronic illness in our
hotels. They were in the group under the greatest threat of covid; infecting COVID
may lead them to death. To cope with this, here is the strategy. Employing
someone who can provide first-aids in your hotel. If there are emergencies, they
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can provide basic treatments before the arrival of an ambulance when severe
situations happen.

Sometimes, people would only feel uncomfortable but not sure whether they are
sick or not. Under this circumstance, I suggest you prepare thermometers or
first-aid kits in the guest rooms. When people feel sick, they can use
thermometers to measure their temperature, get a better understanding of their
condition, and take necessary actions before seeking help in the hospital.

For those who haven’t started their hotel business yet, consider this point:
locating your hotel near a clinic or a pharmacy. They provide a backup to people
as they have access to resources when they need emergent medicine and
therapy.

#4 Self-service technology
It's the 21st century, high-tech is everywhere, and we rely on them every day.
Some devices have been implemented at home. Let’s think about employing them
in our industry. Why can’t we have those in our rooms? For example, having a
voice control system to operate amenities. The light will be turned on when a
person says “turn on the light.” So there is no need to go to the switches and
turn them off manually. The voice control system provides contactless service
which decreases the probability of disease transmission, and it also will be a
bright feature when introducing your hotel to potential customers.

This is just one example. You also can think about having self-service technology
for check-in and out. They decrease the number of contacts between individuals
and help hotels to save costs as you do not need to hire people to conduct this
service; robots or technology can do this for you.
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Our technology will become more mature in the future; it will be used everywhere.
We should behave ahead of the trend, considering employing robots to conduct
guest services to save employment costs and reduce the spread of the virus in
the rooms.

COVID brings us to a new era. People pay more attention to their safety and
well-being. We need to be prepared for coping with this new situation and
people’s new hotel-selection behavior, which can be achieved through focusing
on every small detail. Some of you may think it is expensive to take action, but
the good news is, most people are willing to pay higher prices for these features.
It is never too late to adjust your hotel to the one that will be in favor of this new
era.