The Delta Hotel in downtown Kamloops is shutting its doors to guests temporarily, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The shut down, which starts on Thursday, includes the Cordo Restaurant and Bar at the bottom floor of the five-storey hotel.

General manager Bryan Pilbeam says we in extraordinary circumstances which have warranted an extraordinary response, to look after employees and guests.

He tells NL News “basically everything cancelled” this weekend, between bookings and reservations.

“We’ve been watching this carefully obviously for the last few weeks, and continued to watch business react to this, and not only business but people of our society,” he says.

“For the first half of March, we had a 60 per cent occupancy which is a pretty decent March for our property and for the city. And to the cancellations that just started occurring, we had 70 pages of cancellations that just occurred over the weekend. And that’s reservations, and then groups to reservations… So there’s just no business left on the books.”

The Delta Hotel had just finished a near-$10-million-dollar renovation last spring to rebrand into a Delta Hotel, from Hotel 540.

Pilbeam also is the board chair of the BC Hotel Association, and says hotels everywhere are under the same pressures because of COVID-19.

“We know other are following suit, we’re not asking them to but we know that there will be many more that do.”