Away from communal areas, a private hotel room with an en suite bathroom is an effective place to self-isolate during a pandemic. In fact, ex-footballers Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs have offered rooms in the UK hotels they own to NHS workers who are treating patients with coronavirus and unable to return home. While in the US, approximately 15,000 hotels have signed up to a scheme to offer rooms to emergency services personnel.

Another tool hotels can use to fight germs is the laundry facilities, washing items at high temperatures to kill bacteria. It’s not just bedding that’s washed, but also increasingly staff clothing.

“We are really taking this ever so seriously to try and make sure we keep our staff and all of our guests as safe as possible,” says Neil McDonald, owner of the Priory Inn in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK.

“We've actually now issued clothing - hoodies, trousers, gloves and PPE equipment - for all our staff. And what we what we said to them: ‘You can just come into work, you can get changed into your clothes. We will then wash these items on a daily basis’. We've got the facility to do this. And then when they leave, they just leave us the clothes and they'll get washed for their next shift.

“We've also got an EH officer on site that we've consulted with to try and help us make sure that we're doing everything in our best interests for our staff and obviously our customers.”

The Priory Inn is a pub and restaurant, with 14 hotel rooms, and currently closed to the public. However, there are other people staying there.

“We've had to segregate our hotel. We've got two floors. We've just rented out the whole top floor for a team working on a local care home right next door. They are going to take over the top floor for the next three weeks to finish the care home so that they can then use that for Covid-19 patients and the local hospital,” adds Neil.

“We've got another exit for the hotel, so that they can come in and go out without actually seeing or meeting any of our staff.”

In a time of global crisis, hotels without large cash reserves have had to figure out other ways to generate revenue.

Tetbury’s The Priory Inn has started running a new service entirely. Having only taken over the business at the start of March this year, owner Neil McDonald soon discovered he was unable to furlough all his staff on the government scheme. As a result, he has overseen the launch of a food delivery service to the surrounding area, with existing staff now working as delivery drivers.

“We’d just taken over a big business, with big operating costs, and 47 staff members,” explains Neil. “We had to do something. So that's when we decided to open a shop in our conference room to start developing a box delivery. We started with a fruit and veg box. And we were driving down to the market in Bristol to collect fruit and veg daily and coming back, boxing it up. It was just a really simple concept for £10.

“What happened, over literally 72 hours, was our phone didn't stop ringing. We couldn't keep up.”

Neil explains that a friend then setup an online ordering platform, which has allowed for greater management of orders. The delivery service has expanded to now offer different boxes containing items such as meats, cheeses, and cakes, as well as cooked meals that just need warming up.

“Last week, we did 1,500 deliveries,” he adds. “Our revenue is probably bigger than what we would actually do operating as a hotel.”

Elsewhere, other UK hotels have been receiving funds to house homeless people during the pandemic.

“Hotels have been finding ways to recover their losses. For example, London Mayor Sadiq Khan's office worked with Intercontinental Hotels Group to block-book rooms at a discounted rate for 12 weeks from 23 March for the homeless. Although it’s at a discounted price, some revenue is better than no revenue at all,” adds analyst Ralph Hollister.

There is speculation that the majority of UK hotels may not be able to fully reopen until the end of the year. Many hospitality businesses have been forced to close and are dependent on government support in order to survive. In a recent appearance before the Commons Treasury Committee, UKHospitality chief executive Kate Nicholls described a potential “bloodbath” for the industry if bills couldn’t be paid.

And globally, hotels face a bleak economic outlook for the rest of 2020 amid widespread travel restrictions.

“I believe that all hoteliers are suffering to various degrees depending, from job losses to furlough, to suspension of hiring,” adds Anchalika Kijkanakorn. “It will take more than 1.5 years for us to recover from this. Personally, I think this year is a write-off. We are hoping that next year will see some recovery but it won't be in full.

“For my company, we are now taking the down time to renovate, refurbish, clean up and streamline all parts of operations to ensure that we are efficient, clean and in perfect condition when we reopen. We are pretty busy now with this.”

While the full scale of the economic impact isn’t yet known, it is projected to run into hundreds of billions of dollars. However, there are predictions that the industry will rebound strongly back in 2021.

“The financial impact of Covid-19 will be detrimental to the industry, especially for independent and small-scale businesses that do not have the cash reserves of large multi-national corporations. There is no clear indication of how big the financial impact will be for the hotel industry as it still unknown when restrictions will be lifted globally,” adds Ralph Hollister.

“The global business travel sector is expected to take a revenue hit of about $820bn according to the GBTA (Global Business Travel Association); it is likely that hotels will take a large part of this hit as business travel requires the use of hotels. Leisure travel for hotels has not even been accounted for here, so you can imagine the financial impact Covid-19 is creating for the industry.

“I think the hotel industry will bounce back, although consumer confidence will have declined in general due to the economic impact of Covid-19, there will be a pent-up demand for leisure travel across the globe; so if the pandemic has ended before 2021, there will be a surge in travel next year. Hotels will reopen; the majority are still continuing to accept reservations for stays many months from now to maintain their revenue streams.

“One predicament hotels face is how to price their rooms during and after the Covid-19 pandemic with most hotel companies currently not rushing in to dropping prices too quickly or too severely. The hotel industry recovered quickly following the containment of SARS in 2003 and the hope will be that a similar pattern will emerge after Covid-19 has run its course.”

However, with a record number of video calls taking place at the moment, it remains to be seen if this will reduce the need for as a much business travel once the pandemic has ended.