Hotels Offer Space for Vaccine Sites: Good for Humankind, Good for Business
Photo Credit: The U.S. hotel industry is offering the use of underutilized hotels to speed up the coronavirus vaccine distribution process. Adobe / Andrey Popov
Skift Take
Hotel operators may not see much revenue from offering their event spaces as coronavirus vaccine sites, but this is about the long game: the easier it is to vaccinate people, the quicker a hotel industry recovery can take place.
A Maryland casino has found a new medical life for its unused event space during the coronavirus pandemic — and the greater hotel industry wants to replicate the model to speed up the recovery timeline.
Healthcare personnel are now administering coronavirus vaccines from meetings and event space at the Cordish Companies’ Live! Casino & Hotel Maryland just outside Baltimore. Working in partnership with the Anne Arundel County health department, the casino is able to vaccinate 100 people an hour, a company spokesperson told Skift Monday.
The inoculation site, which opened last week, is an early start in what industry leaders hope can be another instance of hotel owners offering up their properties to help in controlling the virus.
It’s not the first instance of the private sector chipping in to help with vaccine distribution. Companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Starbucks offered their supply chain resources to the U.S. government to accelerate vaccine distribution.
