Hotels and retirement homes have been some of the hardest hit businesses in the coronavirus outbreak. Occupancy rates for hotels across Canada have plummeted over recent weeks, resulting in a significant fall in revenue, while homes for seniors have had a whole host of other challenges to navigate as their residents have been ravaged by the virus.
At Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, ON, 29 residents and a spouse of a resident died from the coronavirus, and similar outbreaks have been seen in many provinces, including most recently in Quebec.
“Their challenges are keeping things sanitized as much as possible, protecting all the residents, and getting in more staff,” said Karim Chandani (pictured), vice president of hospitality at HUB International in British Columbia and an IBC Elite Broker, noting that staffing in particular has become a key hurdle. Traditionally in retirement homes, companies hired part-time staff, rather than full-timers, to help cut down on costs. In turn, employees would be working in multiple retirement homes, a practice that during this outbreak is no longer possible due to concerns about spreading the virus to vulnerable populations. As a result, many retirement homes are now facing a staffing shortage.
To keep their residents safe amid the outbreak, Chandani has seen his clients implement what he calls “extraordinary measures.” One of the largest companies that he works with in this space responded to the virus early on by minimizing non-essential visitors and actively screening all staff, contractors, and essential visitors among a list of other protocols they’ve implemented. This response has revealed why contingency planning is so essential.
“The companies that are best-suited [to respond to the outbreak effectively] have been those that have had strong practices in place for a long time,” explained Chandani. “They’ve had excellent sanitary, excellent protocols and had the right teams in place so that they could react to the current situation very quickly.”
On the other hand for hotels in Canada, the top of mind issues have been staying afloat during the lockdown.
“You’ve got large hotel groups that may have 10 or 20 hotels and are closing perhaps half of their hotels. They’re looking at reducing expenses in every way and some of those would be to limit down contracts on their satellite purchases for TV or internet,” said Chandani. “There’s a lot of government assistance through the banks that has helped, but the biggest challenge has been where they’ve had to do massive layoffs. Slowly, what most good hoteliers are seeing is that business is at some point going to come back and they are bringing on people, like sales managers, to ensure that calls are still getting out.”
This situation has been the most challenging for smaller hoteliers that have one or two hotels in smaller metropolitan centres and have seen their traffic reduced to zilch, leaving them no choice but to close for the time being.
As Chandani helps his clients in the hospitality industry navigate the business and insurance-specific challenges associated with the outbreak, the number one question he’s getting is whether business interruption coverage applies in this case. For anybody that wants to submit a business interruption claim, the HUB team will provide assistance since it could be a requirement from the government to have a claims denial down the road if a business is applying for assistance.
While many of his clients deal with the crisis, Chandani personally is also being affected by this situation. From the start of March until just a week ago, he was on the phone for 10 to 12 hours a day with policyholders.
“I actually shed tears with some of my clients, and it was very difficult to hear their stories because I was putting myself in their situation,” he said. “What this has done for me is it’s made me more connected with my clients. Our relationship has got stronger because we’ve been giving them advice and every step of the way, we’re in communication with our clients.”
Now, he’s sending out emails to clients every two to three days at a minimum with updates that come from HUB’s corporate office, the Hotel Association of Canada, and the Government of Canada that are relevant to their industries, and this delivery of useful information along with his work with clients has underscored the value that brokers can provide when the going gets tough.
“In this time, you never think about new business, yet through word of mouth there’s been so many opportunities where clients are calling me or sending me a message on LinkedIn, asking ‘Hey, can you help us with our insurance that’s coming up?’ and that happened strictly out of the work that we’re doing for the clients,” said Chandani, adding, “Anybody can sell insurance, but there’s two times that clients really need us – one, when there’s a claim and two, when they’re facing a crisis … This is the time that we need to be there for them.”
