Source: Marriott
Buying credits, ghost kitchens and call center are just some of the tactics in which the remaining luxury homes remain a colorful network once all this is over.
Buying credits, ghost kitchens and call centers are just some of the tactics in which the remaining luxury homes remain a colorful net once all this is over.
Source: Marriott
Source: Marriott
When Casa Palope, an intimate 15-room retreat on the slopes of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, began to assess how productive it was to reopen it for tourists, it sought approval from a specific group: its 5,000 neighbors, usually Kaqchikel Maya.
According to the owner Claudia Bosch, her return to prepare the assets for the reopening was not first well received.
“Some took photos of the helicopter’s arrival and departure, creating advertisements accusing us of mass tourism,” explains Bosch. Residents feared that the reopening would mean the arrival of the virus in Santa Catarina Palope, a remote town where, to date, no Covid-19 infections have been reported.
Who can blame them? Destinations like the Bahamas experienced a spike in infections just two weeks after they oversteak foreign visitors. Casa Palope has been receiving the area since August 1, when the country was again legal in Guatemala, when it was announced that foreign visitors, adding up to the Americans, can simply return on September 18, when Guatemala City Airport is back in operation.
As in the Bahamas, tourism is a major economic engine for guatemala’s highlands and, as the standard-bearer of local luxury, Casa Palope plays a significant role in the region’s fiscal well-being. Its participation of 24 people includes almost entirely citizens of Santa Catarina Palope or close to San Antonio Palope, and the domino effect of their competitive salaries gain advantages for many more people. At the same time, the interest of tourism in the project of the Pintando Santa Catarina Palop hotel, an artistic business aimed at portraying the city facades with colorful indigenous images, led to the creation of almost a dozen local businesses.
Bosch, a Guatemalan from a circle of family members of business owners, sees reopening as a must-have lifeguard for the hotel and the region as a whole. “Residents were and remain skeptical and fearful,” he said in early September. But she listens carefully: “We are slowly mitigating those considerations and knowing that it will be a very long process. “
Conversations with the mayor of Santa Catarina and his Aboriginal chef led Bosch to create the Community First program, which will convert 10% of the nightly rate of all bookings, starting September 18, into vouchers that can be spent on select restaurants and craft shops located in the city, part of a mile from the property.
But the initial launch of the program will take place at a handful of emerging department stores where consumers can spend their coupons without leaving resort boundaries. Among them is the classic collective of fabrics Centro Cultural, which produces colorful woven items, adding embroidered bags. , scarves and huipiles, the colorful blouses worn by Mayan women. Once citizens feel more comfortable having visitors on the streets, at their tables and in their department stores; Casa Palope will provide other partners such as Café TUK, a café that sells bags of Guatemalan coffee beans, and unused vouchers will be delivered to Pintando Santa Catarina Palope.
Bosch and his team have also worked to promote public fitness in the city, donating fabrics for the production of masks and installing antibacterial gel stations in high traffic spaces such as the main square and the pier. handwashing stations.
Casa Palope is not in knowing that postpandémic activity has to do with both the well-being of its neighbors and its public fitness protocols, but for hotels located in denser areas, this can mean many things, such as keeping up. the unique spirit of the neighborhoods they are located in by helping local businesses stay alive.
The Revival Hotel in Baltimore, a hotel in Joie de Vivre, for example, has provided on-site dining spaces for an organization of pandemic-displaced food vendors. Its 750-square-foot kitchen has been used through Sporty Dog, a pillar of the food corridor that is enjoyed for its creatively composed gourmet hot dogs. The place to eat was able to use the hotel’s kitchen and carry out the takeaway and delivery facilities from its café on the ground floor. Revival activated this offer from March to May. Since then, the witness has passed to his sister hotel, Hyatt Regency Baltimore, which will temporarily lend a kitchen to Urban Oyster, the city’s first black-owned oyster bar, which closed in July due to the pandemic.
In Andaz West Hollywood, general manager Nate Hardesty and sales manager Matthew Ojinaga lent the terrace to Barcode, his favorite hairdresser still closed. The 533-square-foot area houses up to five barber chairs, which Barcode owner Jorge Lara says have been booked for weeks, which led him to rent more hairdressers.
Ojinga says the hotel “gets some logo recognition” through the agreement, but is more involved just by keeping the barcode. “Once you discover the right hairdresser, you stay with him no matter what. “
Other hotels focus more on community-based fitness initiatives.
In the Caribbean, curacao Marriott Beach Resort has turned its unused oceanfront lounge, the Reef Club, into a follow-up call center where 30 newly hired locations perform more than 2,500 daily fitness checks on approximately 3,000 visitors. weekly on the island. The fitness branch may not handle this volume on its own, explains CEO Mark Nooren; Given the strength with which the tourism sector is driving the increase in the arrival of tourists, the personal sector has intervened to take responsibility. According to Nooren, the medium consists of “paid volunteers” from the industries, to which some of his hotel adds up, who not only supply the space, but also take care of daily meals.
“Our economy has collapsed,” says Nooren. Si call center is helping the island to become a top visitor point again, it will gain advantages for everyone. “