Hotels tout housekeeping to lure back skittish travelers
When Beau Phillips checked into a hotel near Toledo recently, a table in front of the counter barricaded him from getting too close to the clerk, who wore a mask and stood behind a plastic window.
“The key is gently tossed at you from three feet away,” said Phillips, a public affairs executive who was staying at a Radisson Country Inn & Suites while visiting family.
The hotel’s breakfast buffet was gone, the fitness center closed, elevators limited to two riders.
And to reduce the risk of an in-person visit, after Phillips left his room each day, no housekeeper came in to make the bed.
The pandemic has plunged the hotel industry into a historic downturn. Average hotel occupancy dipped as low as 22% in late March, and had risen to a still miserable 48.1% the week ending July 25, according to STR, a market research firm.
So hotels nationwide have embarked on a transformation of the most basic ways they run their business, aimed at showing would-be travelers they understand where they’re at — terrified.
Some new research suggests travelers might have a point.
A study scheduled for publication in September in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases — but already made public by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on its website — found that people infected with the coronavirus shed it on pillow cases, duvet covers, sheets, light switches, and bathroom door and faucet handles.
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, in its new “Count on Us” pandemic marketing campaign, heralds the use of “hospital grade” cleaning products. It is putting on
overt shows of sanitation: Housekeepers now linger and clean around the lobby, conspicuously wiping down public areas, luggage carts, door knobs, and the counter.
“In the past, we may have cleaned hotels in the overnight because you didn’t necessarily want to see people cleaning,” said Lisa Checchio, the chief marketing officer of Wyndham, the franchise parent of Wyndham, Days Inn, Super 8, La Quinta and more than a dozen other major brands among its 6,000 domestic hotels.
Hilton’s new program — marketing name: “CleanStay” — includes a partnership with the makers of Lysol that requires individual hotels to use the company’s products and display the Lysol logo “prominently.” Room cleanings include extra time spent on “high-touch areas” that included light and climate control switches, handles and knobs, telephones and clocks.
And, of course, the remote control “which has one of the highest ick factors or perceived ick factors,” said Phil Cordell, Hilton’s global head of new brand development.
He recalled that one guest had wrapped the plastic lining from the ice bucket around the remote control before using it.
“People are understandably freaked out or hyper aware,” Cordell said.
All the attention to sanitation has created other issues.
Since the masks employees are required to wear shroud smiles, Hilton has been experimenting with hand gestures to express warmth and welcome.
“One is a very simple wave. In some cultures, it could be a bow,” Cordell said. “It could be hats off but with no hat — but that could look kind of weird — or a hand over heart.”
Choice Hotels, a conglomerate that owns brands including Quality Inn and EconoLodge, found in surveys that travelers wanted prepackaged breakfasts, not buffets, and that any fruit should be the kind that peels — bananas or oranges instead of apples or strawberries.
It also found that wouldbe guests wanted outdoor space and so it revamped websites of its upscale Cambria brands to highlight photographs of pools and rooftop decks.