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Date: 6/14/2021
HOLYOKE – After a year of business being directly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, the D Hotel Suites and Spa is welcoming guests back and once again offering services that had been put on hold throughout the past year.
Linda Rosskothen, who owns the hotel with her husband Peter, said it was a difficult year for the hotel. “Of course this was a challenging year for us, [but] what really helped us was to stay positive with all our changes,” she said. Rosskothen credited their ability to continue successfully running the hotel to their ability to adapt and continue to educate each other.
“We’re so adaptable. We continued to educate our staff [and] guests with all the COVID changes,” she said. Rosskothen said the day they were able to lift all restrictions in the hotel was freeing.
“May 29 was liberating, we were able to go back to full operations, what we were doing before,” she said. Rosskothen added such operations included opening their pool fully, reopening spa services to more than one person at a time and being able to offer guests a full complimentary hot breakfast once again. She said that while they hadn’t stopped use of the pool fully, they had distancing and capacity requirements in place.
Additionally, she said throughout the pandemic the hotel had offered guests to-go breakfasts during their stay. “We offer a full complimentary hot breakfast. We had to have a server that would serve our breakfast to-go style,” she said.
However, during the weekend of May 29 Rosskothen said they were able to open up their breakfast to a buffet style service once again. While some were hesitant at first to serve themselves, she said eventually guests felt comfortable enough and adjusted. “Now our guests can serve themselves. We just opened it up, we put up tables and also wanted to take a slow transition to feel comfortable and safe,” she said, adding that everyone taking off their masks felt “like taking off their car seat belt.”
She said while guests were now allowed to serve themselves, there were still some safety precautions in place as people adjusted to the new normal following COVID-19 restrictions being lifted across the commonwealth. “What we did to make people feel comfortable, they can feed themselves now but there’s a que line with a divider and we’re suggesting they use sanitizer,” she said. Rosskothen added that guests seemed hesitant at first to serve themselves.
“Nobody wanted to touch anything. We basically opened it up very slowly, making people feel comfortable going through the line, continuously wiping it down,” she said. “That was a really good transition for us, we put a lot of pride in it.”
Rosskothen said in addition to continuously sanitizing when breakfast was served, there would continue to be “sanitization stations throughout the hotel for guests and staff.” Other safety measures continuing to be taken by hotel staff include continued use of gloves and using sanitizing wipes. However, Rosskothen said sanitizing is nothing new to staff.
“We’ve always had to live with sanitization, that’s what we do. There’s high touch areas anyway, we always did that before COVID. We knew what we needed to do sanitization wise,” she said. Rosskothen added that a significant number of the staff would continue to wear masks.
“The majority of staff are vaccinated, some are still going to wear masks,” she said.
Rosskothen said for the first time on May 29, the hotel was able to have guests in their lobby without capacity restriction, allowing for guests to socialize amongst each other and with staff. “The guests were all excited. The joy of seeing all our guests in the lobby, we weren’t able to do that before. People were there and socializing, it was a really great feeling,” she said.
Additionally, she said that while the hotel was able to begin offering some spa services a while ago, when the restrictions were lifted they were once again able to offer couples massages. “We have five rooms for treatments, people will come here to the hotel. People come and will get a package, and people come and just relax,” she said. “You don’t have to stay in the hotel to use the spa, it’s open to the public. The estheticians are still wearing their face masks, if people don’t want to wear their masks they don’t have to.”
With weddings and events returning, Rosskothen said business travelers were also utilizing the hotel more. “Our business travelers that are coming in, they do not want to do Zoom, they want to connect. Travel restrictions have changed, we’re seeing a flux of the business travelers also coming,” she said.
She said while travelers and guests are returning to the hotel, the need for additional employees was growing. “We just need more employees,” she said. Rosskothen said while her team is “exceptional” and were cross trained in all areas, she asked that guests be patient.
“People just need to be patient when we’re training new people. We want everything to be perfect and strive for excellence every day. That’s our goal, to make it perfect for everybody,” she said.
For more information about the D Hotel and how to make reservations, people are encouraged to visit https://www.stayatthed.com.