Totally sanitised, hotel back in business with lower room rates

Wan Chai's Metropark Hotel reopened yesterday after a week-long clean-up, and management and staff there weren't shy about remembering the enforced quarantine.

In fact, memory of the 'elephant in the room' - swine flu and a week-long quarantine of 283 people in the hotel - was embraced openly. In the morning, before check-in, there was an event in the lobby to mark the hotel's reopening.

Flowers from well-wishers, including a bouquet from Health Secretary York Chow Yat-ngok, were placed near the glass lobby doors. Snapshots of quarantined guests were prominently posted around the lobby, as were letters of support from the Health Department and local businesses. When three South China Morning Post reporters posed as tourists and checked into their room around noon, one hotel staffer spoke fondly about the ordeal.

'Actually it was a happy time for us - both for the staff and the hotel guests,' said the receptionist when asked about his isolation with the guests. The quarantine began on May 1, when hospital tests confirmed that Aleman Arcadio Gutierrez, 25, an occupant of Room 1103, was ill with the H1N1 virus.

As a result of Mr Arcadio's illness, everybody in the hotel was quarantined. At the end of the week's quarantine, the hotel was cleaned from top to bottom - even the mattresses were sanitised. The halls now smell of flowers and cleaning polish and room rates have been reduced. As of yesterday afternoon, a two-person standard room, which normally cost HK$1,600 per night, was now up for grabs at HK$660, a manager said.

Still, many rooms were expected to remain empty the first night. The occupancy rate was estimated to be only 20 to 30 per cent, staff said. 'We still need some time to pick up the bookings because we just opened up the [online] booking engine,' another manager explained.