Don't shutter hotels...re-purpose them as temporary hospitals!

I just finished watching this 6-minute video message from Arne Sorenson (Marriot CEO) to all global employees, and found it to be a moving and excellent example of leadership communications during tough times. All leaders (that's you!) should watch this tender example of decisive, compassionate leadership!

However, as I listened to his message about how global hotel demand is down 90% during this pandemic and how personally painful it will be for Mr. Sorenson to lay people off, slash wages, and shutter hotels, it struck me that there may be a better solution:

Why not re-purpose these hotels as temporary hospitals?

Think about it –

Temporary hospitals need to have the following attributes:

• Close proximity to major population hubs (check)
• Workers with a strong, proactive service mentality who are driven to care for their customers down to every fussy detail (check)
• Workers who are available due to layoffs and can be retrained for the "heavy lifting" associated with logistics, people moving, and other high value work that can augment and support highly skilled medical professionals so the latter can stay focused on the things that require their expertise (check)
• Lots of separate and comfortable rooms for patients to remain isolated (check)
• Centralized food preparation and distribution (check)
• Centralized, world-class cleaning capabilities and practices (check)
• Automated patient (customer) processing on a system that allows custom notations for each stay (check)
• World class building security (check)
• Online, globally accessible portals (think Booking.com, Trivago, etc.) to help balance capacity vs. demand (check)

If our federal government is going to get involved in bailouts during these unprecedented and economically devastating times, wouldn’t it make more financial sense for them to re-purpose hotels as hospitals than the far more costly venture of building new hospitals that will further drain the economy and only be needed during rare pandemics? What will we do with all those new, temporary hospitals after the pandemic...convert them to hotels?

Come on, team…let’s think outside the box. Don’t “bail out” the hotel industry…let them “bail” us out so they can stay solvent, provide world class care to patients, and so we can all #flattenthecurve!

Update: Kudos to Anand Mahindra from India for offering his resorts as hotels. It's happening!