Texas hoteliers are starting to feel some relief now as temperatures rise, but last week they had to figure out how to keep guests happy and safe during a winter storm that caused power outages and water shortages.

Hotel guests extended their stays due to poor road conditions and canceled flights, and more arrived from across Texas to seek shelter when a rare snowstorm resulted in power grid failures and frozen waterlines.

Many hotels, however, were not spared by interruptions to utility services, forcing managers and staff to act quickly to remain operating and serving guests already on the property.

Aimbridge Hospitality started a daily call — called the "power hour" — with general managers at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this check-in also helped to assess the situation at its hotels in parts of Texas affected by the winter storm, said Elie Khoury, executive vice president of operations.

As a result, the corporate offices were able to provide the support and guidance general managers needed to run their hotels during the storm, he said. The general managers could ask questions, request resources and provide information that allowed executives to make better-informed decisions.

“They had us on the phone every single day,” Khoury said.

Aimbridge’s corporate offices also helped coordinate restoration companies to repair properties that were damaged during the storm, he said.

Communication between the corporate offices of Prism Hotels & Resorts and the company's hotels was helped by a regional structure which allows executives to oversee at most eight or nine hotels in a region, said Ghee Alexander, senior vice president of operations.

“We are able to provide better and direct lines of communication with our hotels as opposed to someone with 30 or 40 hotels,” he said. “It's a little simpler from that end in coordinating it.”

Prism’s teams had gone out and bought snow shovels and salt ahead of the storm, but these supplies still were limited, he said. By the second day, the hotels were out of salt.

“We knew this was coming and we tried our best to make sure that our staff had access to what they could, but the whole state of Texas knew at the same time this was coming, and all these winter supplies went off the shelves pretty fast,” he said.

Because of the snow and ice, some of Valencia Hotel Group’s properties weren’t receiving their food and beverage deliveries, said Marcus Latner, corporate director of operations, courts division. Late last week, he said deliveries were behind by three or four days.

Due to the delays, the hotels have been creating mass meals for guests and staff using whatever ingredients they have available, he said.

“It's just sort of what we have on hand and trying to make sure we can produce something for our guests at a minimum,” he said.

Many restaurants near Prism’s hotels were overwhelmed by the storm, and some had to shut down, making it difficult for guests to find food, Alexander said. Some of Prism’s hotels in Texas are higher-end properties that typically serve a la carte dining, but due to shortages of ingredients and staff to serve meals, the hotels set up breakfast, lunch and dinner in a ballroom.

“At least they still had access to hot meals,” he said.

Mark Clinton, general manager of the Sheraton Houston Brookhollow, said many hotels around his didn’t have food and beverage operations up and running because of decreased demand during the pandemic, but his property had enough business to warrant it.

“Thank goodness we did, because taxis weren’t running, Uber wasn’t running,” he said. “None of the restaurants in and around us were even open because they didn’t have power either. That would have been really bad had we not even had food service available to feed all the people that we had here.”

Hotels in the area also have welcomed staff members and their families looking for shelter while they have no water, heat or electricity at home, Latner said. An added benefit is that the employees have not had to brave bad road conditions to report to work.

Staff morale has been good, and they have been relieved to be able to stay at the hotels, he said.

As soon as the company knew the storm was coming, Prism offered its hotels to staff and their families who wanted to stay, Alexander said. It would be difficult for staff to be at work knowing their families are freezing back at home, he said.

“That was one of the top priorities for us — to try and have as many of our employees who wanted to get away from their homes and be given a secure place ... the ability to stay in the hotel,” he said.

Along with providing shelter to associates in need, Aimbridge opened up its Aimbridge Aid program, Khoury said. The company launched the charitable fund toward the start of the coronavirus pandemic to offer associates extra financial assistance.

Burst water lines — which were more likely to affect rooms closest to the exterior of buildings that lost heat — were another problem hoteliers had to act quickly to address, Alexander said. There were a few cases where the sprinklers broke, the sprinkler heads froze or the pipes themselves burst, but property damage has been minor, he said.

“The freeze is one thing, and you may see a few [problems] here and there, but you don't really understand the depth of it until it starts thawing,” he said.

Latner said some of Valencia’s hotels had frozen and burst water pipes, and engineers on the properties shut off water and did whatever repairs they could until plumbers were able to arrive.

Most hotels and other businesses now are trying to evaluate the full extent of damages from the storm to plan repairs, he said.

“It’s going to probably be a long process because there’s so many people that are in need of help,” he said.

Clinton said the cold caused quite a bit of damage to his hotel’s pipes, boilers and water heaters. The power outage affected the elevators as well.

While he was able to get one of the hotel’s vendors to come and check its fire, life and safety systems right away, he heard from other vendors it will be a week or two before they’re able to come to make some of the other repairs the hotel needs.