Saskatoon hotel ready for front line healthcare workers, those who need to self-isolate, and the vulnerable

The City of Saskatoon, the Saskatchewan Hotel and Hospitality Association and area hotels are working together to identify where front line healthcare workers, those coming home from international travel and need to self-isolate, and those who are homeless can go.

So far, one of those places is the Park Town Hotel. General Manager Salil Kulkarni says because of some federal funding that’s on the way, they can offer rooms for healthcare workers at about 30 per cent of their original cost.

“Now we are charging $35 per night for any front line worker, any nurses – any front line worker who wants to come and stay at the hotel,” he says. “Obviously, they are kept on a separate floor, so they don’t mix around with other people.”

Kulkarni emphasizes that they’re only charging enough to be able to pay staff and to maintain operations.

Extra cleaning staff has been brought on to clean elevators, buttons, telephones, desks, doors and handles; any common area that might see higher traffic – several times per day.

A few healthcare workers are already staying there, but they’ve received hundreds of inquiries.

The Saskatchewan Hotel and Hospitality Association’s Jim Bence says their group has put forward an emergency preparedness plan. Right now, they are working with the Red Cross and the provincial government to include the displaced and vulnerable populations, the front line workers and those who need to self-isolate at appropriate hotel properties.

“We have a window of opportunity in Saskatchewan…that if we start to mobilize now, we may not run into some of the devastating issues they’ve had in other countries and now we’re starting to see in Canada, where hospitals have hit capacity for critical care beds, and then they react.”

Which is what is already happening at the Park Town Hotel. Kulkarni says they’re in a unique position not just to offer room for healthcare workers, vulnerable women, families and the homeless, but also to those coming back from international travel and may not have a place to self-isolate.

Their “west wing” is ideal for that. It’s completely separated from the rest of the hotel.

“They (guests) make reservations online or over the phone, and then they pick up their keys from outside the property. We show them the separate entrance, and then these people go and live in their rooms for 14 days…we stock their rooms up pretty well.”

If anyone wants anything, Kulkarni explains they call the front desk and the item is delivered to a chair outside of the room. A staff member knocks and then leaves. No direct contact occurs between the staff and the hotel guest.

He’s expecting the ‘west wing’ to fill up within a couple of weeks.

“I think by sometime in the second week of April, I think we’ll start to see a huge surge of people coming in then.”

Only three things in the hotel are open right now: the rooms, the restaurant for take-out food, and the off-sale wine shop.

The plan right now is to house the healthcare workers on two specific floors, have two floors for walk-in guests, a separate area for those who need to stay for medical reasons like visiting a palliative care patient, and the homeless and vulnerable populations in other areas of the hotel.

In the meantime, some staff have opted to not work out of concern for their safety, and he says more crew members are always needed – but are trained thoroughly before they’re put to work.

“In these situations…there’s little scope for mistakes you know? One small mistake and you can have people infected, so yes, we’ve definitely been kept on our toes.”