Just like many sectors during the pandemic, Hotels in Kamloops have been hit hard and they haven’t seen much in the way of guests over the past 10-plus weeks.
Hotels were never ordered to close and the Sandman Signature Hotel was among those to keep its doors open.
Regional Director Tyson Andrykew says for most hotels in the city, April and the end of March was a sudden drop off with declines across the whole industry. “May was a little bit better, but still down I would say over about 80 per cent across most of the hotels in the city. So pretty severe but we’re hopefully out of the worst of it and we can now start seeing improvements as we go into the next phases of the reopening plan.”
“There has been a mountain of policies that have come out that staff are signing off on and receiving training on and receiving proper PPE and things of that nature. So it is clear across, clear across our chain and our industry that we’re having to adapt and make sure that people feel safe both while they’re working here and while they’re visiting and staying with us.”
Andrykew is hopeful that we are past the worst of it and we can now start to see improvements as we go into the next phases of the BC restart plan and the sentiment is echoed by others in the industry.
Mundi Hotel Enterprises has also kept its Kamloops operations open. Those include the Double Tree located downtown and the Coast Kamloops Hotel.
Regional Director Angela Tasker says definitely a little bit more travel starting to happen now that we are well into phase two of the BC restart plan. “Definitely a little bit more travel happening. April was the bottom of the barrel and May just a tiny, tiny bit of creeping up and June now I think some companies are freeing employees up to travel again which is great.”
“Seeing some corporate travel start to pick up a little bit. I think a lot of that is mostly project based like companies that have to come out and do things like your Telus or Fortis or those type of people.”
Tasker says most of its business throughout the last couple of months has come via the trucking industry. She says it did reach out to see if hospital employees would want their services, but there was little to no business from that.
Not all hotels in the city decided to stay open. The Delta Hotel in downtown closed in mid-March when COVID-19 really started to impact our day-to-day lives. It did just reopen at the beginning of this week and its General Manager says it is working with a list of protocols that is some 18 pages long.
Bryan Pilbeam says those include having at least four hours between when a room is cleaned and when someone can check in, and ideally there will be a full day between guests. “We’ve reduced the number of rooms that our housekeeping room attendants do clean. So they’re spending more times in the room, the products that they have are of a compliancy basis. Marriott’s done an extensive program, we’re following those protocols, following those protocols created by the BC Hotel Association. So the process of cleaning will be intensified.”
Pilbeam says things like valet service and bell-person services will not be offered at this time.
Pilbeam says 50 per cent capacity is generally going to be the guideline for all facilities within the hotel, but in terms of its main meeting room which can hold up to 200, 50 people would be the most allowed.”Just need to maintain that distance. It’s a hotel that was just newly renovated and designed really for social experiences. So as I sit here in the lobby of the hotel we have all the bar stools removed, slowly we’ll look to add some of those back, but generally I think it’s 50 per cent capacity and opportunity is a good number to work with.”
Pilbeam says it had some visitors on Monday and it is hoping to see clientele increase as the month rolls on.
He adds that on March 18th it laid off 103 of its 108 employees and about one-third of them were brought back this week.
