Check in and stay safe: hotels after coronavirus
How will it feel to be a hotel guest in a post-COVID-19 world?
What will being a hotel guest feel like in a post-COVID-19 world? It’s a matter of conjecture for now but surely that sense of touchy-feely personalised service will be different.
Top accommodation providers are testing initiatives, particularly in the US, where health workers have temporarily replaced paying guests in many hotels, and in Australia, where travellers have been tucked away for 14-day quarantine periods at city and airport properties. Japan is fast-tracking technology to roll out more robots to stand and serve, and I reckon we can say goodbye to buffets, that most loved of breakfast options, and in-room dining, with all its associated touch-points between kitchen and delivery. Keyless entry to guestrooms, grab-and-go packaged meals … the list rolls on.
Buffets have long been the mainstay of cruise ships, too, so expect rethinking across all the major lines. Sanitiser stations need to be monitored so passengers actually use them, and share-plate meals, the trendiest concept of the past few years, must surely end. Remember the Chip Dip episode of Seinfeld? “You took a bite, and you dipped again so that’s like putting your whole mouth right in the dip …” We might have scoffed about microbes in the 1990s; we totally get it now.
I’m a huge fan of hotel buffets, for their variety and generosity, and especially love those that celebrate dishes of the destination. The Arabic specialties on spreads in Abu Dhabi and Dubai have always appealed, even as I’ve felt uncomfortable about the possibility of wanton wastage. I’ve never been a fan of the idea of “breakfast food” as a category, involving cereal packets, eggs, yoghurt and bread. Given a choice, as I was at Kwee Zeen at Sofitel Bali Nusa Dua last July, I’d have fresh-made roti canai for my morning meal from an Indian “live station”. So there’s an idea for those on the uptake — make hotel chefs perform, cooking to order. “If it’s prepared in front of you at a market, you’ll probably survive,” Asian cookery guru Charmaine Solomon told me an eternity ago. She was referring to Delhi belly, but it’s advice that lingers, all the same.
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