With global travel at a near standstill as a result of COVID-19, our hotels, resorts, and residences are finding unique and needed ways to engage local communities and stay relevant to travelers who can’t currently stay with them by offering entertaining and educational virtual classes, programs, and tips.  

Aid and Engagement 

More than a few Preferred Hotels & Resorts are lending a helping hand to their local and regional communities. Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage, Alaska, is gifting its unused hotel amenities to a local youth shelter so that more than 100 individuals can shelter in place more comfortably with donated rollaway beds, bedding, and toiletries. Across the continent at Woodstock Inn & Resort in Vermont, staff are distributing bags of groceries to fellow furloughed employees and team members until its planned reopening on June 1.  

Solmar Hotels and Resorts and The Solmar Foundation are bringing COVID-19 education and prevention methods directly to poverty-stricken communities in the Cabo area, while also providing hygiene instructions, food, and paper goods to help the local communities make it through these uncertain times. Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts is providing similar help to its local community by distributing care packages of food and personal hygiene products to more than 200 underprivileged families in their area.  

For medical workers, both local and volunteers from other areas, several hotels are offering either free or reduced rates on stays for certain periods of time. For example, Sophy Hyde Park is donating rooms to University of Chicago Medical Center staff medical workers, free of charge.  

“The Sophy Hyde Park will offer up 90 of its 98 rooms,” hotel spokesman Gayle Conran said. “It’s really the closest hotel, only about a mile away, so medical staff won’t have to drive home. Just put your head on a pillow and get a good night’s sleep.”  

Other hotels providing the same sort of relief includes Wave Resort in Long Branch, New Jersey and the Hotel Hayden, Hotel Hendricks, and Hotel Henri in New York City, which are expanding their offerings to both relief and essential workers.  

 

Education and Entertainment 

While we’re all at home doing our best to beat COVID-19 and flatten the curve, our shared love of travel has not been diminished. And our hotels have been doing their best to help alleviate a little bit of that wanderlust we’re all feeling by offering virtual classes – from cooking to cocktail making.  

Learn simple, at-home recipes from the acclaimed chefs of Montage Hotels & Resorts with its Montage at Home website and enjoy luxury meals from your own kitchen. For a taste of Mexico, Grand VelasRiviera Nayarit has officially launched a new #BetterTogether social media campaign which includes weekly recipes and cocktails from its chefs and mixologists 

Likewise, you can follow Balboa Bay Resort in Newport Beach, California, on social media for insider tips on DIY facials like the honey citrus face mask and at-home cocktail recipes. 

 

Tips for Self-Care While in Quarantine 

Marc Belmonte, Director of Avalon, the Holistic Beauty Lab of Palmaïa – The House of AïA  on Mexico’s unspoiled Caribbean coast, offers a quick and ultra-relaxing self-care hair treatment utilizing olive oil for maximum conditioning.  

“The best way to apply it is in small amounts, with the help of your fingertips, massaging strand by strand on all the ends of the hair, or the areas that require greater hydration and nutrition. Leave on for 10 to 20 minutes and rinse with plenty of warm water,” said Belmonte. For an even more restorative experience, gently warm the oil beforehand for an at-home “hot oil” treatment.  

For a perspective more la dolce vita, Frederico Gullotti, Certified Trainer at Grand Hotel Tremezzo on Italy’s stunning Lake Como offers stuck-at-home gym-goers with three exercises to keep fit without the facilities.  

First, Gullotti recommends jumping rope. Start with 4-5 sessions of 20seconds/session, to be increased in number of sessions every week. Second, a staircase workout is effective at maintaining and improving overall fitness and health. Start with 3 days a week, to be increased every week. Finally,Gullotti offers up step aerobics, which “has all the benefits of a high-intensity cardio workout without putting stress on the joints.” He recommends beginning with 20 minutes every day and then increase time and frequency each week.