Hurricane Ian draws closer to Florida’s southwestern coast and is expected to make landfall by tonight, but hoteliers in and near its path have spent months preparing.

The storm, a Category 4 hurricane, has already left 1 million residents without power in Cuba and has gathered strength from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Associated Press reports. Hurricane conditions are expected to hit Florida this morning before making landfall later in the day, bringing high winds, torrents of rain and storm surges.

So far, about 2.5 million people in Florida have been ordered to evacuate.

Hoteliers in the region have been carefully watching the formation of Hurricane Ian and other storms to determine whether and when to put their plans into action.

Nicholas Bilotta, senior vice president of operations at GF Hotels & Resorts, said he and his team started getting ready for the storm as soon as there were signs of a depression and circular motion over the Atlantic and Caribbean. The third-party management company has numerous properties in Florida.

“We take note, especially it being so close to October,” he said. “This is peak season for hurricanes for us.”

Bilotta said GF Hotels started having daily calls with its Florida properties last week to keep everyone updated and put protocols into action.

The on-property teams take interior and exterior photos of the building and upload them for pre- and post-hurricane documentation for insurance and inspection purposes, he said. They also plan communications with utility companies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency that come to the region to handle recovery efforts.

The hotels will set aside blocks of rooms for associates and their families who don’t want to stay in their homes during the storm, Bilotta said. The hotels are tall, concrete structures with impact windows and shutters, making them safer than some residential buildings. 

“Whether they want to work or not work, we open up those doors for them to make sure that they are safe,” he said.

Most of GF Hotels’ properties in Florida are sold out, Bilotta said. The hotels are strategic about how many rooms they set aside for emergency teams, for associates and for other guests, he said.

The company and its hotels are always cautious when setting rates ahead of a hurricane, he said. However, Florida is always early in declaring a state of emergency, and counties do the same, and that action locks in rates. Hotel rates were locked last week.

Regardless, it’s a sensitive situation — hotels are a business and need to make money, but not to the detriment of people’s safety, Bilotta said.

At the start of hurricane season, Aimbridge Hospitality shares a preparedness guide with managers at its hotels in hurricane areas, Jason Kilgo, corporate vice president of engineering, said via email. Leadership teams teach on-property staff how to complete a pre-hurricane checklist, which includes assessing inventories and working with a national vendor to ensure there are enough supplies.

Aimbridge's corporate risk and engineering support professionals work with the hotels to identify and make any necessary repairs to prevent water from getting into the properties, he said.

When a storm is approaching, Aimbridge sends out automatic alerts twice a day sharing the latest path projections, he said. Two days before the projected landfall, it holds daily calls with the affected hotels and all of Aimbridge’s corporate support disciplines. 

“For Hurricane Ian, we have engaged with all of the hotels, whether or not they are in a projected path,” he said, adding the company has 80 hotels in Florida.

In areas of Florida with evacuation orders, GF Hotels will close its properties, Bilotta said. That’s been the case with one of its hotels in the Tampa area. The company has set up room blocks for the associates of that hotel at another of its properties in Orlando.

It has another hotel in Estero where there have been mandatory evacuations for Zones A and B but not C, where the hotel is located, he said. The company is monitoring county government alerts, but doesn't anticipate an evacuation order for that zone because it’s near the highway, an exit route.

The company bases its decision whether to close a hotel on guidance or orders from local governments, Bilotta said.

With Aimbridge’s scale and resources, it can move guests and clients as needed, Kilgo said. The operations team works closely with the national sales team to identify client needs and source alternative locations. It also coordinates with FEMA and other first responders.

When needed, Aimbridge’s hotels will house associates and their family members, he said.

Greg Daniel, area director of operations across five Tifton, Georgia, hotels for Williams Hotel Group, said his hotels had more cancellations Monday than new reservations.

Tifton is considered a hot spot for Floridians to evacuate to amid tropical storms.

“But then overnight, we actually picked up what we had lost plus some,” he said. “It’s kind of always like that. Obviously as the storm shifts, things change; so, we lose and then we gain others. We’re prepared for that; we expect it.”

Of Williams Hotel Group's five hotels in Tifton, three are “pretty much full” all the way through Saturday, Daniel said. The other two are fallback hotels. The five Tifton hotels include a Comfort Inn & Suites, Country Inn & Suites, Days Inn, Holiday Inn Express and a La Quinta Inn & Suites.

“We do try to take care of our regular people that do come through,” he said. “I know it may sound crazy, but we do have regulars who come even during hurricanes. We certainly don’t want to lose them.”

Daniel said because of labor issues this hurricane season seems to be much more challenging than any of his previous 21 years he’s been in the market.

“I was going around [the hotels early] this morning. We were short-handed and were able to pull in different departments — our preventative maintenance person, managers, we all kick in and do what we can where we need to,” he said. “We want to have double coverage at the front desk, double coverage in breakfast. Right now, it’s falling on us as managers because we don’t have the extra people to do it.”

Daniel said rates at the five hotels are generally kept where they’re set, but prices will never go up during a crisis. If guests come through and can’t afford a certain rate, his team will help where they can.

To further help evacuees, Daniel said pets are permitted at the company's hotels, even those that don't normally allow them. His team stocks up on personal care items for guests as well as water bottles and individually wrapped breakfast items, especially in case the storm comes toward Southwest Georgia.

“If we don’t have power, then no one else does either,” he said. “The good news is, we have a good relationship with Georgia Power, and they actually stay at one of our properties. They’re here now; so being the host hotel, they do try to keep us up.”

Prior to the start of hurricane season in June, and certainly before its peak in late summer and early autumn, hoteliers in areas where hurricanes frequently hit undergo annual training.

Hilton's hotels in storm-prone areas receive training starting in April each year to prepare for hurricane season, said Steve Zerang, regional director of safety and security at Hilton. They also complete mid-season training in September to ensure all the resources from April are still available.

Although the technology in place can track precisely when a hurricane is going to hit, it's best to have preparations in place just in case, he said.

“If you're not prepared, you're gonna find yourself standing in the middle of the storm going, ‘What do I do now?’” he said. “We want to make sure they're ready to go from day one.”

Each hotel has an on-site crisis team, usually handpicked by the property’s general manager, Zerang said. The team undergoes training that includes keeping hotels up to date on protocols, going through the supplies checklist — which includes water, sustainable foods and fuel — and reviewing emergency communication procedures.

An important aspect of the communication procedures is Hilton’s alert app, which is how properties stay in contact with safety and security teams throughout a storm, Zerang said. Hilton will reach out to hotels through the app once a hurricane hits to determine whether additional resources or aid are needed. It's an improvement on the prior system that relied on emails.

Another advancement in technology from Hilton is its Visual Command Center. With it, Zerang said he can find every Hilton asset close to the radius of a storm with a click of a mouse and have contact information on hand in an instant.

“We have that right at our fingertips to say, ‘OK, these are the affected properties. Let's get our resources in order. Let's communicate with them. Let's prepare,” he said.

Back in 2005, Hurricane Katrina made Hilton brainstorm how its systems could be better prepared for a storm after it had trouble locating all of its properties amid the damage. Zerang said the company has learned from its experience as evidenced by its response to Category 4 Hurricane Ida last year.

David Piscola, general manager of the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, said he was in constant communication with meteorological teams to know exactly when Hurricane Ida was going to hit. Once they knew it was on track to hit New Orleans, he shut down the hotel’s reservation service and started getting as many people out of the building as possible.

After the storm hit, the property lost power. Piscola said he was in constant communication with Hilton’s response team, and less than 12 hours later, members of the team arrived at the property to aid the staff “both physically and materially.” While they worked on getting the power back, Hilton had a security company send vehicles to evacuate guests still in the building and transport them to a Hilton property in Houston.

Return to the Hotel News Now homepage.