When I arrived at the Residence Inn Dallas by the Galleria, the nearly year-long collapse in demand for accommodations appeared, at least temporarily, ended.
When Arctic air crashed through climate change weakened Jetstream that normally corners it around the polar regions and invaded the Lone Star State this week, I was among the millions of Texans who were left without power, and not I was the only one who remedied it. loss with a hotel reservation.
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As I stood in line in a lobby full of wealthy-looking Dallasites, many dressed in incongruous layers of designer sweatshirts and outerwear with excited dogs of different sizes and breeds, I noticed a kind of weary, artificial joviality was in play. the standard order.
A well-dressed woman pretended to collapse against the reception desk’s Plexiglas partition with exaggerated relief when the receptionist apologized for the long wait. “It’s nice to be in a place with electricity and a working shower,” she drawled.
Evidence that the property had been virtually unoccupied for nearly a year was common. The building has a dual brand between Marriott’s Residence Inn and AC Hotels properties. They typically maintain separate lobbies, elevators, and reception desks, but the reception desks had been consolidated into the air-conditioned lobby, where the two reception positions served the combined 256 rooms of both brands.
The spacious air-conditioned lobby was packed to the brim with guests working on spreadsheets or video conferencing with headphones, while the frozen pool was covered in fresh snow on the patio.
The hotel was fully booked, and it was no wonder after the morning I had spent trying to find accommodation. Several hotels in the North Dallas / Addison area were shown fully booked, either with guests fleeing frozen houses and compromised pipes or having closed reservations because the properties themselves faced the exact same problems.
Many larger hotels in newer buildings have emergency generators to continue to power the elevators and emergency lighting in case they lose power; sometimes generators can even maintain a certain level of energy throughout the building. Other nearby hotel buildings or essential structures, such as hospitals, can benefit from priority status for those parts of the network.
However, many hotels in the area reported that they were similarly affected by electricity shortages in the region or that they had frozen pipes and therefore had no running water.
I had another wrinkle in my own needs: I needed a hotel that accepted cats as pets. Many properties call themselves “pet friendly” when they really mean “dog friendly”.
Installed in my studio, I began to reflect on the many facets of the hotel industry. During the COVID-19 pandemic, travel to conferences and conventions evaporated. Individual bookings were down to a trickle of essential workers and die-hard leisure travelers. The hotels were left empty as potential guests sat in their homes.
Now, a steady stream of climate refugees has revived the abandoned corridors of hotels buried until recently. Business travelers heading to nearby office parks have been supplanted by displaced households doing their best to maintain normalcy in a temporary shelter, a social distancing in warm comfort. The hotel staff until recently on leave or with reduced hours is once again needed and appreciated.
I also found that a hotel room does not solve all problems. Immediate needs were addressed, but the security and warmth of the room did not end the anxiety surrounding the situation.
I could see in my thermostat app on my smartphone that my power was on and my house was slowly heating up for a good chunk of the time I was in the hotel, but there was no way of knowing how long it would last (the state The company utility was, at the time, trying to rotate the outages to different parts of the network). I use a CPAP to sleep, so the prospect of losing energy in the middle of the night was not exactly pleasant.
The length of the interruption is also unknown. Most hotel companies have maximized flexible cancellations for reservations, but in most cases it was still necessary to cancel at least one day in advance to avoid penalties. When would it be necessary to admit that you couldn’t depend on the electricity grid and pay for another night?
He had to continue by faith, but he had reminders that he had made good decisions over the next few days. I had electricity in my house most of the time (and the electricity at the Residence Inn started just as I was packing to leave), but only moments after checking into a nearby DoubleTree by Hilton, near The Galleria (the Residence Inn still it was sold out for additional nights), I received a message that the water in my condo had been shut off for plumbing repairs.
Fortunately, electricity and water have been available at DoubleTree for my entire two-night stay, but the hotel faces other weather difficulties in winter. Supply deliveries have been erratic so no DoubleTree cookies are available (damn). A buffet breakfast was available the first morning, but supply problems intervened, and the second morning only the cafeteria was open.
Protection issues aside, there is excuse for a ray of optimism. It feels good to be in a crowded (socially estranged) lobby again. It’s comforting to know that hospitality professionals who have had an immensely difficult year have returned to their profession, caring for hotels full of paying guests.
Good to know that the hotel industry continues.
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