News & Events

All the Ways the Travel Industry Is Helping with Coronavirus

While tourism has come to a halt, hotels and other travel companies are supporting front-line response efforts as well as their own employees. They've jumped in to donate food and supplies, aid medical personnel, lend empty real estate and other physical assets, and establish employee funds. Here are several ways the travel and hospitality industry is giving back amid the crisis.

Food and supply donations

The Line D.C. has converted its lobby into a pickup location for Friends & Family Meal, an organization that collects food from restaurants and overstock from suppliers. Hospitality workers who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus can pick up free bags of groceries throughout the day.

Ocean House Management—which operates Ocean House, Weekapaug Inn, and Watch Hill Inn in Rhode Island and Inn at Hastings Park in Massachusetts—has opened a thrice-weekly food truck in Westerly, Rhode Island, to serve free lunch to area school children 16 and under.

Sweeping travel restrictions and advisories. Grounded planes and canceled cruises. Pitch-dark casinos. And a completely locked-down Italy, a much-loved destination for travelers all over the globe.

There’s no denying that the coronavirus outbreak has changed, and will continue to change, how we travel. But even in light of the bleakest news—like the potential loss of 4.6 million travel-related jobs, according to a recent estimate by the U.S. Travel Association—the industry has banded together to aid in the fight.

While tourism has come to a halt, hotels and other travel companies are supporting front-line response efforts as well as their own employees. They've jumped in to donate food and supplies, aid medical personnel, lend empty real estate and other physical assets, and establish employee funds. Here are several ways the travel and hospitality industry is giving back amid the crisis.

Ocean House Management—which operates Ocean House, Weekapaug Inn, and Watch Hill Inn in Rhode Island and Inn at Hastings Park in Massachusetts—has opened a thrice-weekly food truck in Westerly, Rhode Island, to serve free lunch to area school children 16 and under.

SingleThread, the three-Michelin-starred Relais & Chateaux restaurant-inn in Healdsburg, California, is working with Sonoma Family Meal to produce 200 meals a day for local families. Across the pond, Kimpton Fitzroy London is serving free breakfast and lunch to healthcare and emergency workers, service industry employees, and local residents.

The Galt House, in Louisville, Kentucky, has stocked a makeshift pantry with produce, soup, milk, and household essentials like toilet paper, diapers, and sanitary products; hourly workers who may be experiencing a shift reduction can access it on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Following the shelter-in-place order issued in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rosewood CordeValle, in San Martin, California, established an ongoing care-package program; out-of-work staffers can pick up bundles of eggs, milk, toilet paper, and other essentials at the resort’s front gate. Rosewood also donated its unused food to area restaurants for use in takeout orders.

Efforts from the Hyatt universe: Hyatt On The Bund, in Shanghai, donated 1,000 shower caps (for use as self-protection) to local volunteers. And after temporarily closing, Grand Hyatt Vail bundled more than 200 packages of food and supplies for employees impacted as a result; Park Hyatt Beaver Creek gave all unused food, including bread, produce, milk, and other products, to staffers and their families; and the Hyatt Regency Orlando set up an assembly line-style food-distribution system to serve more than 600 staffers.

In Las Vegas, which pulled in more than $50 billion from tourism last year, major resort brands (including Caesars, MGM, Wynn, and others) have donated more than 400,000 pounds of food to local charities. MGM Springfield has donated 12,000 pounds of food to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Open Pantry Community Services, and Friends of the Homeless.

After closing its hotels in Mexico and Jamaica, Palace Hotels, which counts the all-inclusive Isla Mujeres among its portfolio, tapped its philanthropic arm to donate unused food to locals whose livelihoods rely on tourism.

Certain hotels are now doubling as TaskRabbit centers. Staff at The Hari, in London, will make grocery, pharmacy, and post office runs for those who need help; just send a direct Instagram message or email info@thehari.com. Harold’s restaurant at Arlo SoHo in lower Manhattan will deliver meals to elderly or disabled folks who may not have access to fresh groceries; the public is encouraged to alert the restaurant via Instagram if they sense that a neighbor needs an extra hand.

Forced to trim or rotate staff to meet reduced bookings, Hiltons around the country have launched individual relief efforts. Hilton Columbus Downtown, with the support of its ownership group, Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority, provides curbside meals, plus access to an onsite pantry, to hotel and Greater Columbus Convention Center employees. Embassy Suites by Hilton Tampa Downtown Convention Center and Hilton Tampa Downtown donated 300 pounds of food to Metropolitan Ministries, a homelessness nonprofit. Conrad New York Downtown donated about 900 pounds of food to Rethink Food NYC, and Hampton Inn by Hilton Fort Stockton, in Texas, provides free bagged breakfasts to local children.

Windstar Cruises, which runs small luxury ships, donated seven pallets (worth about $8,000) of fresh produce and dairy to Feeding South Florida, a Miami-area hunger-relief non-profit in the Feeding America network. The company also donated a pallet of milk and butter (from a cancelled Australia cruise) to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.