Realizing that hotel managers have neither the training, nor the expertise to function as an emergency shelter, the American Red Cross is willing to partner with them in order to assure the safety of our visitors.
When a lodging property partners with the American Red Cross to become an emergency shelter a number of good things occur:
1 - The hotel facility is inspected and certified as a shelter by the local Emergency
Management teams and the American Red Cross
2 - American Red Cross provides trained shelter managers to ensure the proper management of the shelter, using hotel staff if at all possible
3 - American Red Cross provides the hotel staff with free disaster training and disaster preparedness seminars for their families as well as the hotel
4 - American Red Cross reimburses the hotel for food and beverages served to shelter occupants unless the hotel provides these as an in-kind donation to the disaster operation
This is a win-win situation where the hotel provides a service to the community and their guests. Of course, when lodging property managers agree to become an emergency shelter, they must be ready to receive evacuees from other areas (host shelter) as well as from their own (risk shelter). When hotels act as a host shelter only meeting, convention, and dining rooms are utilized. This allows the manager to continue to sell guest rooms to persons not desiring to use mass shelters.
