Advice from SHA Faculty on How Hard-Hit Hotels Should Communicate during Pandemic
Easter weekend in the Netherlands normally draws large numbers of tourists to enjoy the beauty of the tulips the country is famous for. This family visiting a field of tulips next to the main road in Lisse on Sunday had little company as all nonessential traffic was banned to enforce social distancing and curb the spread of the coronavirus. AP Photo/Peter Dejong
Advice from SHA Faculty on How Hard-Hit Hotels Should Communicate during Pandemic
Also in our Coronavirus Monday Roundup: Virtual coffee hour for BU staff to talk parenting in a pandemic
If you have a question or comment related to BU and its response to the COVID-19 crisis, on the subject of the move-out, remote learning, retrieving personal belongings, or anything else, please visit Boston University’s special COVID-19 website. Questions are being answered there by specific departments in a timely fashion. Thank you.
—Doug Most, executive editor, BU Today
Quote of the day:
It is hard to find the words to express my debt to the NHS [National Health Service] for saving my life.
Stat of the day:
Coronavirus has revealed that 40% of us can work from home without the world falling apart, and the other 60% should honestly be getting paid a lot more.
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) April 12, 2020
BU News
Coping help for BU employees who are parents, via Zoom
University faculty and staff who have children and may be stressed by what’s happening—whether they’re going to campus every day or working remotely—have a place to come together today, Monday, April 13, from 9 to 10 am, on Zoom. The Faculty & Staff Assistance office will offer a Virtual Coffee Hour for Parents, billed as “a low-stress, no judgment zone for parents to talk about the challenges of social distancing, family togetherness, and for some of us, working remotely, with children of all ages.” It’s a place for parents to come together to share ideas, laugh, and get support. Register here.
Checking in with the hospitality industry
The hospitality industry is one of the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, as few people are traveling or dining out, even in places where hotels and restaurants are allowed to stay open or shelter anyone other than essential workers. Two School of Hospitality Administration faculty members have penned a guide for those businesses, “Hospitality Communications in a Time of Coronavirus: Tips for Maintaining Trust and Engagement.” Leora Lanz (COM’87), an SHA lecturer and chair of the graduate program, and Makarand Mody, an SHA assistant professor of hospitality marketing, wrote the piece with Marco Ferrari, an Italian branding expert, for the industry website hospitalitynet. It features suggestions for communicating with customers (“Inform all in-house guests regularly—at the point of check-in and throughout the stay—about the measures adopted”), staff (“Keep in mind that associates who are confident in the processes in place at the property level can instruct guests comfortably”), and the media (“Never speculate or respond to hypotheticals. Never say ‘No comment.’ Avoid sarcasm.”).
“Poetry is not a luxury.” These days, face-to-face communication is
Thanks to COVID-19, the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground will host its first-ever virtual Student-Faculty Forum on Tuesday, April 21, exploring the necessity of poetry and the arts in our lives. The event centers around a 1985 essay by writer-activist Audre Lorde titled “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” about “moving beyond what is, about envisioning, expressing, and grasping things without names, dreaming, freeing oneself of the power structures in which we live.” Register here for the forum on Zoom, which will run from 6:30 to 8 pm. Prior to the event, students are invited to submit their favorite poems as part of the Favorite Poem Project’s Restoration project.
Boston and Beyond News
Living in the city
What will the pandemic’s long-term effect be on America’s cities? After a big move to the suburbs from the post-war 1950s through the 1970s, more recent decades have seen an influx of people seeking what the urban environment has to offer. “The packed stadiums, lively campuses, and vibrant neighborhoods that supply much of the compact city’s energy and charm depend on people being willing to gather,” Tim Logan writes in the Boston Globe, as he wonders how that might change because of the coronavirus and our period of social distancing. “Will it amount to a blip in the decades-long rebound of urban life, or mark the end of an era and the start of a gradual turn to social distancing as a way of life?”
US & Global News
How long to heal the economy? Brace yourself
Officials are already arguing about whether we should be reopening businesses in a few weeks—or a few months. But one expert tells the New York Times that getting the economy back to normal could take up to 18 months. This could be a long, hard road that we have ahead of us,” says Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, who helped lead the response to the 2008 financial crisis as a Treasury Department official.
Latest count of coronavirus cases
United States, 546,874; Massachusetts, 25,475.
Find BU Today’s latest coverage of the pandemic here. The University’s hotline for faculty, staff, students, and visiting scholars to call for referral of their virus-related medical concerns is 617-358-4990.