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Quarantine hotels: When opportunity meets with opportunism
It is not a stretch to say that the government's mandatory quarantine policy is helping to mitigate the pandemic's impacts on the hotel industry, but instead of paying it forward, some quarantine hotels have adopted a profit-oriented approach.
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Two people who have tested positive for COVID-19 carriers are sprayed with disinfectant on Jan. 23, 2021, prior to entering an isolation facility at a designated hotel on Jl. Kramat Raya in Central Jakarta. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan)
T
he progressive spread of the Omicron variant is proof that we are still very much riding the pandemic roller-coaster. Each ride has its own theme and setting. Every turn, climb and dive in COVID-19 cases and measures brings an alternating mixture of hope, despair, confidence, doubt, trust and distrust that affects each person differently.
Let me give a glimpse of our ride over the past month. My wife and I have decent jobs in the Netherlands. Our immediate families live in Indonesia. Yes, you guessed right, it is a family-themed roller-coaster with a cross-border setting.
We belong to a large group of people on our beloved planet who are attached to two countries simultaneously. In the autumn, the COVID-19 caseload in the Netherlands and Indonesia were both favorable. Indonesia’s mandatory quarantine had been reduced to three days, giving a glimmer of hope that it would soon be lifted entirely.
We saw a window of opportunity that was so encouraging, we decided to book a flight to visit our immediate families and most importantly, our frail and elderly parents whom we have not been able to attend to for almost three years now. We did consider buying a business class ticket to allow for physical distancing on a 14-hour flight.
Some airlines indeed offered a tempting bargain for a tantalizing business class suite. But in the end, wisdom prevailed. All passengers breathed the same air circulating in the aircraft. Also, the price difference from economy class was still significant. So we opted for the lowest possible price, just at the end of the low season. Still, I meticulously chose an airline with a cabin configuration that would allow the two of us to sit separately from other passengers, at an extra cost.
When searching for tickets, to my pleasant surprise, all airlines allowed free rescheduling, even for the cheapest ones. Maybe this was due to an International Air Transport Association regulation, but it seemed a gesture on the part of the airline that lent a sense of solidarity during these trying times. Apart from the flight, I had to do some homework to comprehend the elaborate travel rules, advisories and procedures. All indicators pointed that all systems were a go.
And then Omicron emerged just two weeks before our departure. Hysteria on a global scale followed. In Indonesia, the mandatory quarantine trend was reversed and set to a challenging 10 days. It took us significant time to assess all options for dealing with the new situation. We could postpone our flight to a future date, but it felt so random to do this. The psychological burden might be unbearable. So we ultimately decided to keep our plans intact and started searching for a hotel room. We took the window of opportunity and we were determined to hold on to it.
