SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) — With limited travel and the ongoing shelter in place in San Francisco, hotels in the city have been forced to close while others operate at minimal capacities.
Just like others in the service and hospitality industries, times are tough right now.
Many hotels in the city had to cut staff, or temporarily close.
Now some are working with the city to find ways to use their rooms for people to self quarantine.
A few months ago, streets in San Francisco were bustling with people and new visitors were checking in and out of hotels.
Now with the coronavirus and shelter in place order — this has become the new normal.
“The hotels were already seeing significant drops in their occupancy, but since that’s come out and with the continued shelter in place, the hotels occupancy rates have become much much lower,” Kevin Carroll said. “And were thinking most of the hotels are in the 10-percent range and also we had situations where hotels decided to temporarily close.”
Carroll, president and CEO of the Hotel Council of San Francisco, has seen drastic changes across hotels over the last few weeks.
“When our occupancy is as slow as it is, that affects our number of staff that are in the hotels,” he said. “So we have situations where hotels have been either furloughing employees, laying off employees, creating different work schedules for people as well.”
He said many hotels are now coordinating with the city to make use of their empty rooms, working to provide 3,500 rooms for people to self quarantine.
The rooms would be for people who currently live in communal spaces or don’t have the ability to self-quarantine.
“If this is something that’s worked out with the city, it would be the whole hotel not a situation where you would have guests and people under quarantine in the same hotel,” he said. “It would be a situation where an entire hotel would be used.”
Carroll says the city and hotels are still working out the details, hoping to have an update in the next week or so.
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