Hotels providing free rooms for medical staff

Hotels in novel coronavirus-hit Wuhan are offering free accommodation to front-line medics and medical teams coming from other parts of China such as Shanghai and Beijing to aid the city in its time of hardship.

Xiao Yaxing, the owner of two hotels located near Wuchang Railway Station, set up a WeChat group on Jan 24 to arrange guest rooms for medical workers.

After Wuhan was put into lockdown on Jan 23, it created commuting problems for many medical workers."Hotel rooms are empty, so we can make use of them and let medics in," Xiao said.

"At first, volunteers who owned rental properties started offering them to medical workers, and now it has snowballed to involve the whole hospitality industry," said Jiang Heng, director of a hotel under CCINN Group. The hotel group began offering rooms to medical workers in Wuhan on Jan 25.

Major hotel chains including Dossen International, Plateno and Jin Jiang International and short-term rental platforms such as Tujia and Airbnb have also joined in.

Between Jan 23-30, 271 hotels in Wuhan and 47 hotels in cities nearby have provided free accommodation totaling more than 40,000 room nights for 6,056 medical workers.

On Jan 31, the group led by Xiao announced that 159 smaller hotels would stop providing services for medical workers, given that 62 hotel chains have better medical equipment and supplies to meet demand.

Hu Huaqiang, a physician at Hannan District People's Hospital, said in an interview that he and his colleagues used to go back and forth between hospital and their homes. But with the free rooms offered by nearby hotels, they are better able to have a good rest after working long hours.

Renowned hotel groups such as Wanda Hotels and Resorts are working to support medical teams from across the country who are set to converge in Wuhan to cure the infected and stem the spread of the novel coronavirus pneumonia.

Wanda has two hotels in Wuhan: Wanda Realm Wuhan and Wanda Reign Wuhan. The former is to serve medical workers, with the guests staying in the hotel moved to Wanda Reign Wuhan.

"Staff members with these two hotels are working together to coordinate resources for medical teams," a hotel executive said.

On Feb 4, two teams from Huashan Hospital Fudan University in Shanghai and the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region arrived at Wanda Realm Wuhan. They came to treat patients in one of the city's newly built hospital facilities.

Min Chengyong, general manager of the hotel, said that the 146 rooms, from double rooms to suites, caters to one guest each, in order to assuage any health safety concern.

"Our hotel will disinfect all public areas every day and facilities that we use frequently every hour, and put hand sanitizers in public areas," Min said. "There is an isolated area outside the hotel, where medical workers can spray and disinfect themselves before entering the hotel."

At the entrance to the lobby, medics will have their temperatures taken and there will be a refuse container for used masks.

Single-use-only paper towels have been placed inside the elevators to help avoid touching high-traffic areas such as the buttons.

Many other hotels are doing the same. Macro Polo Wuhan has opened its doors to a group of more than 200 emergency medical workers from China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Beijing Hospital, both based in Beijing, and welcomed one of the country's top scientists－Wang Chen, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

The hotel has also provided accommodation for over 20 officials from the Beijing government during their designation to Wuhan.

Its general manager Lee Weng Wai is originally from Malaysia and could have been on the evacuation flight out of Wuhan, but he and his family chose to stay.

"Daily exercises to balance our health and immunity, team briefings and updates allow us to maintain good morale and team spirit,"Lee said while reporting back to head office based in Hong Kong."We are in this together, and through our commitment, we will come out the other side stronger and more resilient than ever."