SOME HAMPTON ROADS HOTELS GET CREATIVE TO FILL VACANT SPACE
A different way to ‘work from home,’ space for day cares offered by managers
When much of the world has been ordered to stay home, there’s little demand for homes away from home.
Some hotels have responded by getting creative while they wait for a return to some semblance of normalcy.
At the 256-room Marriott Newport News City Center owned by Crestline Hotels and Resorts, that’s meant marketing its rooms as office space and its ballrooms as spacious environments for day cares to spread out.
Rooms equipped with free Wi-Fi were being offered, starting at $25 for a half day, as a way for people to “work from home” without the distractions that come with being home. With 25,000 square feet of meeting space, the hotel’s management made pitches to day cares needing room to keep their staff at a social distance.
“We’re trying to do anything we can,” said Brandon Johnson, director of sales and marketing for the hotel. He’s hoping they can adapt where they can, “while the doors are still open.”
That included signing up its hotel restaurant, Kitchen 740, for Door-Dash.
“We’ve got to be creative,” he said. “We anticipate that it’s going to be a stop-gap until we can get to business as usual.”
Most of all, sales calls to current and prospective customers have changed.
“We don’t want to be too sales-y,” he said. Or a bother. So rather than calling to advertise a future date or venue, they’re calling to check in on how clients are doing. No pitch. “The time will come,” he said, when this will all be over. Already, his November calendar is busy with events moved from March and April.
The hotel continues to pivot based on the news and the governor’s latest order, and it hasn’t turned into a ghost town entirely.
During the second week of March, the hotel had even booked a small meeting that ordered three meals a day and had their seats spaced out per social distancing rules.
As of the third week of March, he still had hotel guests. The hotel typically partners with hospitals in the area and sees government agency business. And construction crews and truck drivers still need a place to sleep when they’re not building or driving.
Kimberly Schlick, chief operating officer for Virginia Beach-based LTD Hospitality, has been offering special rates for first responders and truck drivers and “work-from-home” rooms rented from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., calling it “work safe space” for $49.
“Nothing that’s game-changing, but every little bit helps,” she said.
Her company, which owns and manages 13 hotels — including 10 in Hampton Roads — has been in contact with the Army Corps of Engineers, too, in case it needs any potential hospital space.
“We just want to be top of mind when lodging or other needs become available,” she said.
The company laid off or furloughed 70% of its staff, and one of its first efforts was to reach out to other businesses and industries to make them aware of the skills those workers had to offer.
“If there are no rooms to clean or to check in, there’s no need for that staff,” she said, noting that the bottom fell out for local hotels the week of March 16. “Every day is a new analysis on what we can do to maintain.”
All the hotels were still open and operating as of a week ago, but certain floors were being closed to save money on utilities.
The hotel industry was among the first to see the impact of the coronavirus on its bottom line.
In the four weeks starting March 8, the number of rented hotel rooms across the country dropped 54% and the revenue hoteliers earned per available room dropped 66%, to $31.69, according to data the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy obtained from hotel research firm STR.
Virginia and Hampton Roads have largely mirrored those declines. Williamsburg hotels, highly dependent on traffic from Busch Gardens and Colonial Williamsburg, have suffered the most, with just 17.4% of rooms occupied in that time and revenue per available room dropping to $14.57.
Ron Kirkland, director of the Williamsburg Hotel & Motel Association, said his group’s members have reached out to social service organizations to house the homeless and domestic violence victims.
“There is always some level of need for this type of housing, although at present there has not been any significant change in demand,” he said.
Calling the state’s orders for who should close and who should stay open arbitrary, he suggested things like amusement parks, go-kart tracks and theaters could have remained open with limits on the number of people allowed in, as well as increased disinfection. He compared people standing in line at a grocery store to people standing in line for a roller coaster, or a few people playing mini-golf or building a sand castle on the beach.
“I’m not sure how there’s a big difference,” he said. “Then again, I could be wrong.”