With the relaxation of the State of Emergency regulations, many businesses have been slowly re-opening this week. But, the Government has doubled down social distancing and hand sanitization protocols, to mitigate against the possibility of a second wave of positive coronavirus cases in Belize.
The government is being strict with the businesses that are being allowed to reopen, but one hotel is taking greater precautions than required.
For some time now, the Radisson Fort George Hotel and Marina in Belize City have implemented a series of best practices for its employees and potential guests.
Those include daily cleaning and disinfecting of their walkways, queues, and other trafficked areas. Hand washing and sanitization for shoes are being required for entry and exit into the hotel's facilities. The staff is also on a daily campaign to wipe and sanitize all parts of the hotel that humans are likely to touch.
That's a lot of cleaning and disinfecting on a daily and hourly basis, and we stopped by to speak with the General Manager about how she and her staff have been able to maintain that level of discipline:
Sandra Grisham-Clothier - General Manager, Radisson Fort George Hotel
"What we did first is we brought our team of management together because we have professionals from all the departments. So, we put together a think-tank and then that think-tank went from department to department to figure out the best practices. The first thing we did was to go after all the high touchpoints. So, we made sure within each department that they had what they called their high touchpoints. And we developed a new department, which is the sanitation department. And that sanitation department our think tank put together some best practices that you just saw. So, anyone entering and exiting the property has to do the shoe wash and hand sanitization and can do it on their way out as well. Within the rooms, we've taken a different approach. We've gone in and stripped the rooms. The only thing in the room is what you need to have in the room, the amenities that you need to have in there. We try to take anything unnecessary things out of the room so that there are fewer things to worry about when sanitizing and cleaning. We've also, in addition to the cleaning of it, we're putting our rooms out of order for 72 hours between arrivals and departures. So, if you arrive at this hotel, you know that this room as been vacant for 72 hours, and it's had the opportunity to be sanitized 3 times within those 72 hours. So, we feel that gives us an edge up on being safe."
"We volunteered to take COVID-19 people who need to be quarantined, hospital workers, anything that we could do to help because we think we're all in this together, and we need to make sure that we get through it. And we can't just oust people. We have to house them. And if that's gonna cost us money, it's gonna cost us money. We also wanted to do it because we want to stay alive. We want to see Belize stay alive. We want to see all the hotels stay alive, all the restaurants stay alive. We want to see all of us make it through in style."
Reporter
"Explain to us the drastic downturn in revenue, since this entire pandemic started to make its way to Belize's shores."
Sandra Grisham-Clothier
"There is no revenue basically if that's the question you're asking. We're just like everyone, I think, outside of the US, I would say. We've lost at least 98% of our business. That 2% is basically just a few dollars here and there for meals and things like that. And we've been fortunate. Last night, we had two arrivals at the hotel. They were people who had decided to stay in Belize. They came here for medical reasons, was one. One came because they were flying out today. So, we've had a couple of arrivals, but even that, we've had to run what I call very serious local specials for that. We're doing rates as low as $60 US a night, in order to attract some business to the hotel."
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