‘Covid hotels’ in the dark about what’s next

New Delhi: After the announcement that hotels would be turned into Covid care facilities attached to hospitals, most hotels have heard neither from the government nor the hospitals. The hotels find themselves in an unenviable position because whatever little of new income avenues they had planned by way of home delivery, takeaway or laundry services also came to a halt once the news spread of their turning into Covid facilities.

An executive told TOI how his hotel had voluntarily cleared all the rooms to be transformed into quarantine spaces, and awaited the attached hospital staff’s arrival to train the hotel employees. However, no one has approached them. The hospital that the hotel was attached to said patients would only be sent when beds at the medical institution were all occupied. There was no mention of training or of preparedness measures suitable to a Covid care facility.

The Suryaa was the only hotel that actually converted itself into a sickness bay. Greesh Bindra, vice-president, operations, said he had expedited the process of turning the hotel into a medical care facility out of concern for his employees. He would not push his staff into providing Covid care without training them for the task, he said. Despite this, not a single patient has checked in so far as Holy Family Hospital it is attached to has almost 70 beds available for Covid cases.

One hotel manager said that after convincing the staff to report for duty and learn about the hygiene, room and food requirement for Covid patients, the associated hospital informed them that the hotel rooms would be needed only when its own beds were fully occupied. However, the announcement on the hotel becoming a Covid centre led to corporate offices in the vicinity asking their employees to work from home.

“Almost 80% of the hotel staff has gone on leave without pay. Even the 20% that report to work fear for their safety and for their family’s well-being,” said another hotelier. “We expected the hotels to be allowed to reopen and instead were told they would become Covid care centres. Hotels in Delhi will not be able to sustain for long without income.”

The repercussions are already there. A chef working in an Aerocity hotel said, “We received calls from our long-term patrons and corporates expressing concern about using in future a hotel that had been a Covid facility. Many customers also cancelled their home delivery orders.”

Saying that a hotel in Aerocity had got six patients after the district magistrate instructed the hospital to send the patients there, a hotelier wondered if a hotel with around 100 rooms could survive on occupancy of a mere six rooms. That is why the general managers of many hotels have reached out to the district magistrates and have also sought a joint appointment with chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and deputy CM Manish Sisodia this week to express their willingness to help in the Covid crisis, but delineate the practical problems faced by hotels. They will request permission to resume business to stave off bigger financial losses.