Covid-19: Hospitality brands open up facilities to support overstretched healthcare industry

With hospitals across the country facing an acute shortage of beds due to a surge in new Covid-19 cases, leading hospitality brands are, yet again, opening up their facilities to support the overstretched healthcare industry.

From converting hotels into Covid care facilities in partnership with hospitals to providing paid quarantine facilities and care centres for elderly people, the pandemic-hit hospitality industry is repurposing its infrastructure to reduce overcrowding at hospitals.

Hospitality major ITC Group last week announced that it had converted its Welcome Hotel properties in Chennai, Coimbatore, Bengaluru and Dwarka (Delhi) into paid quarantine facilities in partnership with hospitals. The facilities will help mild and asymptomatic patients, advised by partner hospitals, to quarantine themselves in a highly hygienic and safe environment.

Similarly, the Indian Hotels Company (IHCL), which owns the Taj group of hotels, also announced recently that it is converting 11 hotels in Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and other regions into quarantine facilities in partnership with hospitals like Apollo. The hospital partner will provide an on-site doctor and nurse to monitor vital parameters.

Several major cities like Delhi and Chennai are crippling with bed shortage amid exploding numbers of new Covid cases in the second wave. Long queues of ambulances carrying Covid patients waiting outside several government hospitals for lack of beds are becoming common.

Sarovar Hotels & Resorts, which manages over 90 operational hotels in 55 destinations in India and overseas, also launched a self-isolation facility where guests can book themselves for self-isolation or quarantine.

Guests, who have relocated to a new city, want a quiet place to ‘work from hotel’, self-quarantine themselves or want a safe and comfortable zone to stay can head to the nearest Sarovar Hotel and utilise the self-quarantine facilities as required, the hotel said.

The hotel management company has also partnered with iamgurgaon, an NGO and Emoha Elder Care to open a 60-bed private Covid care facility at the Golden Tulip Hotel, Sector 29 in Gurugram.

This facility, which has a dedicated oxygen concentrator, 24/7 nursing support, among other facilities, is aimed at elders who are Covid positive and are unable to take care of themselves in their homes. The initiative is partnered with Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram for Covid consultations.

Sarovar Hotel charges ₹7,000 per night (plus GST) for the Gurugram facility while double bed costs ₹9,000 per night.

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