Hotels step up cleaning efforts to ease worries about SARS

By Barbara De Lollis
USA Today

Hotels across Asia and in Toronto are applying soap and bleach to combat severe acute respiratory syndrome as well as the disease's damage to travelers' confidence.

Along with encouraging employees to wash their hands frequently, many hotels have stepped up cleaning routines. Elevator buttons, chandeliers, bathrooms, stair rails and even hotel limousines are getting scrubbed more often, usually with bleach.

Some hotels are dumping more chlorine into swimming pools to kill germs, and others are closely monitoring their guests' health.

At the Portman Ritz-Carlton in Shanghai, China, the country hardest hit by SARS, all guests have to complete a health declaration form and have their temperature taken when they check in, says hotel spokeswoman Michelle Denise Wan.

Guests arriving from SARS-infected areas must have their temperature taken every day. All employees are also required to have their temperature checked daily, and those in housekeeping and in the kitchen have to wear masks.

Some Asian hotels are paying more attention to their ventilation systems, says Phil Golding, associate director of HVS International's Singapore office. They're turning air conditioning systems to the highest levels and cleaning or replacing filters at least once a week.

The Wyndham Hotel at the Toronto airport is making hand sanitizers available to all guests and front desk employees. It is also offering alcohol swabs to guests who want to personally disinfect their phones, although housekeepers do that anyway, says company spokeswoman Darcie Brossart.

The hotel is also putting airline crews and other frequent group customers on the same floor each time they return to help reassure them, she says.

The hotel is keeping those practices in place, even though the World Health Organization lifted its travel advisory against non-essential travel to Toronto last week.

The fears about Toronto hotels were underscored last month when players for the Kansas City Royals — in town for a three-game series — told reporters that they were spraying disinfectant in their hotel rooms.

Hotels, like airlines, are on the front line of the worldwide disease. The SARS outbreak was spread worldwide by a medical professor from Guangdong province in Southern China while staying in a Hong Kong hotel.

He is believed to have passed the disease to other guests, including some from Singapore, Canada and Hong Kong.

Kai Lamle, general manager of the Crowne Plaza Toronto Centre, knows guests might have concerns. That's why he's sending his corporate contract customers set to arrive within the next 60 days a letter detailing steps the hotel is taking. Those steps include replacing existing cleaning products in its guestrooms with germicidal disinfectants. "While one could argue that these measures are extreme, the comfort and security of all guests is the primary concern of the hotel," Lamle's letter says.

Ecolab, a top maker of cleansers for the hospitality industry, says sales of some sanitizers have soared because of SARS. Ecolab's sales of Endure, an alcohol-based hand rinse, for instance, have grown 100 percent since SARS became an international concern in March, says Allan Schuman, Ecolab's CEO.

Since the outbreak, the company has started producing some of its products in China.

"They were using regular hand soap products," Schuman says. "Now, everybody wants a product that will handle this problem."