Last year, the COVID-19 crisis brought the world to a standstill. The hospitality and travel industries have never experienced such a drastic and sudden downturn – but out of this, we have seen some of the greatest acts of kindness, collaboration and humanity from businesses around the world.
In this blog post, we want to share some of the incredible ways that hospitality brands – both big and small – have given back to their community this year…
THE STUDENT HOTEL
Industry-leading hybrid brand The Student Hotel rolled out extensive community support at their sites across Europe in the wake of the pandemic.
The hybrid brand worked with a variety of non-governmental organisations over the course of this year. This included TSH HQ partnering with Berlin-based volunteer organisation Service the City to collect goods for homeless or underprivileged families.
Their sites in Amsterdam and Eindhoven supported the Salvation Army during their first lockdown period by donating breakfast food packages and pillows for the homeless. These sites also offered complimentary hotel rooms to medical staff who were working around the clock to treat COVID-19 patients.
At their locations in Berlin, Rotterdam and Maastricht, they worked with their in-house restaurant and bar – The Common – to ensure their local community didn’t go hungry. This included dropping off food to the elderly who weren’t able to leave their house during lockdown periods and their student guests stepping up to prep and deliver meals to the local homeless shelter. In Berlin, the kitchens also made and packed lunch for frontline workers at a nearby hospital.
Their community work has been ongoing throughout the year and will continue into 2021.
UBUNTU BEDS / ONCE
In March, Kim Whitaker – hospitality entrepreneur and co-founder of South African hostel chain Once – launched Ubuntu Beds, an initiative which unites hospitality businesses with healthcare workers fighting COVID-19 on the front line.
The online platform matches healthcare workers with hotels, hostels, guest houses, and rental properties located near their places of work, such as hospitals or clinics. Donations then pay for them to be safely accommodated, free of charge.
By connecting healthcare workers with accommodation providers, the initiative ensured that medical professionals were not needing to travel long distances back home and put their families at risk of contracting COVID-19. It also provided a much needed source of income for accommodation businesses which were drastically hit by domestic and international travel bans and restrictions.
As of this week, Ubuntu Beds have facilitated hosting more than 1000 healthcare workers for over 20,000 nights at one of the 1182 accommodation providers on their database. Almost R7 million (€387,189) has been raised in donations so far for accommodation businesses and suppliers involved.
CLINK HOSTELS
Clink Hostels launched their ‘Shut Up and Listen’ campaign in November, pledging 1000 free beds to travellers who are volunteering to impact key social causes.
Earlier this year, the hostel chain – who currently operate in London and Amsterdam – conducted a survey with over 700 past guests spanning 36 countries to understand how they would make a positive impact on the world and the support they would need to make a difference. With 86% of respondents stating they feel that companies should be doing more to challenge current social, political and environmental issues, Clink took action.
To support the campaign and make it easy for their guests to volunteer, Clink has reached out to the local communities that surround their sites to find worthy causes and organisations who need volunteers. The charities that Clink have partnered with include Taste Before You Waste, an initiative focused on the prevention of food waste, and 10,000 HOURS, a foundation creating a movement for social change through organising events for the most vulnerable people of our society.
As well as complimentary accommodation for their efforts, volunteers can benefit from Clink’s partnerships with local companies. From coffee shops to wineries (and even a virtual reality arcade!), businesses have joined with the campaign to offer volunteers discounts and freebies.
The campaign has recently been nominated for the Global Youth Travel Award for Notable Innovation – you can cast your vote here.
ENNISMORE
This year, Ennismore – the London-based owner and developer of unique hospitality properties around the world – has given back to local communities in a variety of ways.
In the summer, The Gleneagles Hotel announced their #OurTurnToCare initiative in which they will donate 365 room nights a year for the next five years to NHS Scotland workers. Working with HIT Scotland, the project was created to thank NHS staff for their courageous work and efforts during the coronavirus pandemic.
The hospitality group also supported Marcus Rashford’s campaign to encourage the UK government to continue providing free meals for underprivileged children during England’s October school holidays. The Hoxton in Shoreditch donated breakfast bags to a local school to help give their children a better start to the day. In addition to this, The Hoxton sites in both Holborn and Southwark offered a free vegetarian pasta meal from 12-6 pm to any child who needed it.
Across the pond in Portland and LA, The Hoxton also provided a safe place to stay for evacuees who were displaced during the spread of wildfires on the West Coast in September.
SWEET BCN YOUTH HOSTEL
Like many hostels and hotels, Sweet BCN Youth Hostel was ordered to close by the Barcelona Hotel Association in March as Spain implemented one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe – but they managed to take this negative situation and turn it into a powerful positive.
The hostel – which would usually be packed with tourists – signed an agreement with non-governmental organisation Homeless Entrepreneur to house homeless people during the crisis.
From March to September, the hostel provided a safe space to reside for 19 homeless people. They also organised a range of activities for the residents including online yoga and body movement sessions as well as language classes for those who could not speak Spanish.
The agreement was part of the Homeless Entrepreneur’s #HomelessHostelsWork project which has worked during the crisis to house the city’s homeless. Following the project, the organisation provided a set of concrete actions to assist residents in integrating back into work and society.
The NGO have announced that all those who were sheltered will now work with them for the next 12 months until they have found both ‘decent employment and housing’.
QUARTERS
This month, Quarters – a global coliving network – announced their newly founded Quarters Neighbourhood Fund, a community impact programme for ‘small businesses and local heroes’.
With the devastating impact that COVID-19 has had on major cities around the world, the coliving company has pledged to invest up to $100,000 in small businesses in the cities where they are based – New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Berlin, and The Hague.
The aim of the community-impact fund is to offer immediate financial assistance to small businesses to enable them to keep their doors open. The programme is open to any type of business including bars, restaurants, shops, salons and spas, as long as they are within walking distance of one of Quarters’ coliving sites.
Through the initiative’s messaging, the coliving operator is also seeking to instil the importance of shopping local to their members and increase footfall to businesses involved.
CODE POD MANAGEMENT
This month, CoDE Pod Management organised a fundraiser for Cash for Kids, a charity that supports disadvantaged children.
The charity gives grants to help children that need it most across the UK with the aim of improving the lives of those affected by poverty, illness, neglect, or those who have additional needs. Their work has never been more important as the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed many more families below the poverty line.
From their mobile coffee van, CoDE served up their famous waffles – which they serve for breakfast at their sites – along with hot drinks including coffee, tea and hot chocolate to the people of Edinburgh. All sales will be donated to the Cash for Kids charity.
ROOM MATE HOTELS
The Room Mate Group was one of the first to offer up its rooms to those in need when the pandemic took hold across Europe in March.
Starting with sites in Madrid, the Spanish-owned group provided authorities with six of their sites to house vulnerable elderly people and healthcare professionals working at nearby hospitals. Following on from this, other hotels in the group located in France, Italy and the US offered the same. In total, the group provided 12 hotels and 3 apartment buildings to host medical workers and elderly people over the course of the pandemic.
The group also became the first hotel chain to offer its guests free Covid-19 tests in October.
GNÔMADIC
With ‘hospitality, community and sustainability at their core’, gnômadic – a coliving space and community located in the centre of Singapore – have initiated a variety of activities to support their local community and the environment this year.
Most recently, the coliving brand had two charitable drives involving their residents. In October, they encouraged their residents to volunteer at Food Bank Singapore, where they spent the day sorting and packing food donations for various relief efforts across the country.
This month, they supported the Children’s Wishing Well (CWW) – who provide a range of services for Singaporean youth from disadvantaged backgrounds – with a Christmas donation drive to help offset the cost of assessment books and shoes for children (just in time for their new school year).
gnômadic is also an active contributor to efforts focused on preserving our global environment. To celebrate each new resident, the brand makes a donation in their name to the Rainforest Trust, a charity that protects the world’s rainforests.
OSTELLO DEL PORTO
The Italian region of Lombardy was the epicentre of Europe’s coronavirus outbreak, with Bergamo the hardest-hit town.
For this reason, many health professionals flew into the region to support the local hospitals. Stepping up to play their part, Ostello del Porto – located on Lake Iseo – opened up their site and housed a variety of medical staff for over 100 nights as they fought to suppress the outbreak in their area.
The Italian hostel brand also provided mandatory quarantine spaces for travellers returning to Italy from abroad between June and November.
STOCK EXCHANGE HOTEL & HOTEL FOOTBALL
Both Stock Exchange Hotel and Hotel Football – owned by footballers-turned-hoteliers, Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs – were closed to the public in March in order to provide complimentary accommodation for NHS staff.
As many medical professionals were needing to isolate themselves away from their families to avoid spreading the coronavirus, both hotels decided to play their part and provided a total of 176 beds for local NHS staff.
The Stock Exchange Hotel was nominated for the Lockdown Hero award in the Made in Manchester Awards 2021 for their role in helping the local community.
LEBO’S SOWETO BACKPACKERS
During South Africa’s national lockdown earlier this year, Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers in Johannesburg distributed over 200 food and clothing parcels to their local communities.
The hostel brand worked with their connections on the ground in Soweto to deliver these packages to Mzimhlophe Hostel as well as to people within informal settlements in Orlando West and Kliptown.
In addition to this, they pivoted the vegetable garden – the ingredients of which they usually use to cook for guests – into an employment opportunity for locals. They employed women who had lost their income as a result of the pandemic to maintain the crop and created a vegetable market for locals to purchase food for a low price. They also set up a vegetable delivery service for a nearby community of pensioners to mitigate their risk of contracting COVID-19.
DOMIO
Domio – a growing apartment-hotels company based in the US – announced they would ‘open their hearts – and doors’ to frontline health workers earlier this year.
The brand provided up to five nights of free housing to any medical professionals and first responders in need of ‘safe, comfortable and clean accommodation’, at their sites in Nashville, Miami, and Chicago.
They also offered the option for workers to extend their stay beyond the initial complimentary five-night period at 35% off the market rate.
THE LABS COLLECTIVE
Hybrid brand The LABS Collective offered both its residential and flexible workspaces to those on the coronavirus frontline in London in March.
STAY in Hawley Wharf, Camden – the brand’s debut serviced apartment offering – offered bedrooms within its apartments for those working in nearby London hospitals, totally free of charge for a one-month period. They also provided a complimentary care package with basic provisions.
In a further effort to help and support the community, The LABS Collective also dedicated its largest event space – Camden House – plus a number of private offices across its buildings, for the emergency services and critical call centres to use as they needed.
Camden House became a ‘common room’ for those on the frontline with complimentary tea and coffee provided at all times of the day.
ADOPT A HOSTEL
And finally, here at Stay the Night we also wanted to do our bit when the pandemic hit. Back in March, we teamed up with hostel industry players – Lior Slepkov from hostel.consulting and Kash Bhattacharya of Budget Traveller – to launch the Adopt a Hostel campaign.
Having seen the devastating impact the pandemic was having on the hostel industry, we knew we had to help. As there was so much uncertainty around travel, bookings for future trips were almost non-existent – instead of encouraging travellers to book, the Adopt a Hostel campaign asked them to purchase a gift card for a future stay at a hostel of their choice or to make a donation to help hostels cover their costs.
Together, we built a partnership with Gift Up! to facilitate the gift cards, built a website with a database of over 300 hostels, created the moving campaign video above featuring hostels around the world (with the help of the brilliant Sabrina Wulf), and launched a global PR campaign to spread the word with coverage in National Geographic, Lonely Planet and on CNN Money, among others.
To date, the campaign has raised over $100,000 to support hostels around the world.
Despite such a terribly difficult year for the industry, it has been truly heartwarming to see incredible gestures from hospitality brands around the world. When hard times come, kindness and humanity shines.
DOWNLOAD OUR WHITE PAPER – THE FUTURE OF HOSPITALITY: WHY 2021 IS THE YEAR OF THE HYBRID
Looking forward to 2021, the lines between where we live, work, and play are blurring faster than ever before. As people demand more from the hospitality experience, hybrids are in a strong position to meet this new consumer where they are. In this white paper, we share our 6 predictions on why 2021 will be the year of the hybrid. We also have interviews with leaders in this space who share their insights on the future of the industry.
