Free and reduced-rate hotel rooms help essential workers rest easy

Health care workers battling COVID-19 and worried about bringing the disease home to their families can now rest with more peace of mind:  About a dozen hotels on the Island are offering free or highly reduced room stays to these local medical workers, as well as those who've come from out of town to help.

Seven Hilton hotels on Long Island, including the 165-room Hilton Garden Inn in Melville and 178-room Hilton Garden Inn in Roslyn, are participating in the chain's "1 Million Rooms" initiative to donate rooms to frontline medical professionals during the coronavirus crisis, said Laura Ford, Hilton's Americas communications director.

The rooms will be available through the end of May, she said. 

Caroline Wright, 29, an intensive care nurse who traveled to the Island from Charleston, South Carolina, to help care for patients in a COVID-19 unit at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, has been staying for free at the Hilton Garden Inn in Roslyn for about two weeks. 

"I'm working 12-hour shifts, which are physically, mentally and emotionally draining," Wright said. "So to be able to have this part of it figured out ... is a huge, huge relief." 

Wright had planned to room with another nurse to save money but  found out about Hilton's program through the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, a trade group. The group is one of more than 10 industry organizations the chain is working with to make the rooms available. 

"Having to share a room with another nurse [also caring for COVID patients] was going to be scary for me," she said. "I'm so grateful knowing I have a nice, safe place I can go rest and decompress."

Marriott's "Rooms for Responders," a program launched in partnership with American Express and JP Morgan Chase, will provide free rooms to health care workers in COVID-19 hotspots, including New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C.

On the Island, at least one hotel, the Residence Inn by Marriott in Central Islip, is participating in the "Rooms for Responders" program, a salesperson at that location said. However, employees at more than a dozen Marriotts said the hotels are offering discounted rates for health care workers but not participating in Marriott's free rooms initiative. 

Some health care employers on the Island have provided staff on the front lines with the option of staying at paid-for hotel rooms in an effort to help keep their families safe. 

Northwell Health has booked rooms, some at discounted rates, for more than 200 employees -- a mix of local staff and out-of-state personnel, a spokesman said.

Kelly Ann Connelly's employer offered no such benefit.

The 42-year-old Medford nurse, who cares for patients with autism and other intellectual disabilities at group homes in New York City and Long Island, immediately checked into a hotel after one of her patients tested positive for coronavirus. 

"As soon as I found out I was exposed, I reserved a room," she said. "I didn't have PPE [personal protective equipment] and masks weren't available. I have two boys, 10 and 12, and the last thing in the world I would ever want to do is go home and get them sick." 

For nearly a month, Connelly, who has continued to work, has stayed at a Wyndham hotel in Queens; her sons are cared for by their father. 

"I've spent about $3,000 on the room," she said. "I had to dip into my savings."  

But now that she's aware of the Hilton program and offers of free or discounted rooms from  other hotels, she said she's interested in looking into them.

Mike Hastings, president of the Emergency Nurses Association, a 40,000-member industry group based in Chicago, said the organization has been working with Hilton to place members across the country. 

About two weeks ago, "we posted a link on our website where members can log in and access the page to book a hotel room," Hastings said. "Our site almost crashed a couple of minutes after launching it." 

Since then, more than 9,000 association members have accessed Hilton's booking page through the group's site. 

 To opt-in to the room donation program, hoteliers must make  at least 10% of their inventory available to health care workers for free, said Dorothy Roberts, vice president of hotel operations for Jericho-based hotel industry advisory firm Oxford Hospitality, which represents several Hilton hotels on the Island. "We're already nearly at capacity for these rooms," she said.  

Despite being among the businesses hit hardest by the pandemic, Roberts said the hospitality industry wants to help. 

"We're a service industry. ... We step up," she said.

About 80% of hotel rooms across the country are empty, according to a new report by STR, a firm that analyzes hotel industry data. 

In contrast, at the 90-room Southampton Inn, an independently owned hotel in Southampton, general manager Dede Gotthelf said almost all the rooms are full and all guests are essential workers.  

"We're open year-round, but we're generally not full in the winter," she said. "When COVID started poking its very ugly head around here, we knew we wanted to welcome these workers and do our best to make them feel comfortable." 

Most guests at the inn are medical professionals working at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital, with rooms -- at a 75% discount -- paid for by the hospital, she said. 

"There's a lot of people here from out of town, coming to provide relief for local nurses. Some people are working on infastructure projects or they're in communications, but they're all essential workers," Gotthelf said.

"I'm just overwhelmed by the deep level of dedication that all these people have. My staff and I are doing whatever we can to make them feel as at ease and happy as possible as soon as they walk through the door."