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Urbanites prefer staycations about town during COVID-19
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fter months of social restrictions and most activities confined to the home, urbanites are gradually starting to look to spending their leisure time out of the home.
Some have been so bold as to fly or sail to an island destination and still others have gone on road trips, while many have decided to stay put and instead check in to local hotels and resorts on a staycation.
Four- or five-star hotels are preferred, as potential guests are more confident that these hotels practice and apply strict standards to their health and safety protocols. Meanwhile, resorts are also popular for their vast and open outdoor spaces.
Anggi, not her real name, told The Jakarta Post on Monday that she took her first staycation in August, about five months after COVID-19 was declared a national health emergency.
“I find working from home and schooling at home really stressful,” said the lecturer at a Yogyakarta university, who has a 13-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter.
She wanted to go on a vacation to refresh her mind, but thought that going someplace far away should be avoided, not to mention crowded places.
“So I opted for a staycation instead, because I saw that these [starred] hotels have some procedures in place to ensure hygiene and cleanliness,” Anggi said.
To date, Anggi has so far stayed at the Hyatt Regency Yogyakarta, the Alila Solo in neighboring Surakarta and the Ayom Java, also in Surakarta.
“Before I checked in, I called the hotels to ask them about their health protocols, how they serve breakfast, how their public facilities are managed and whether frequent [disinfection] of touch points are conducted,” said Anggi. She added that it was also important for her to know about any strategies the establishments had to anticipate large crowds.
She found out that the Hyatt Regency Yogyakarta and the Alila Solo offered breakfast buffets, but that their restaurant staff served the breakfast to minimize contact with the serving dishes. This made Anggi feel safe.
At the Ayom Java, where each room has a private plunge pool, she and her family were served a floating breakfast at the pool.
“The floating breakfast was a new experience for my children, because when we previously stayed there before the pandemic, the breakfast was served buffet-style,” said Anggi.
As for their staycation activities, Anggi said that she and her family went swimming on at least two occasions: As soon as they arrived and the following morning. They also went on a walk around the property, just as they did at the Hyatt Regency.
Apart from hygiene and sanitation, Anggi said that she also preferred hotel rooms that had a balcony or a bathtub. This way, if she and her family couldn’t head outside the room, like to the pool during the rainy season, they could still take a soak in the tub or go out to the balcony.
While many might consider a staycation at a good hotel in town as a safe option, other urbanites would rather wait until the situation got better, when the number of COVID-19 cases had declined significantly.
Rahmasari Muhammad, founder of the educational family club Clip Clap, told the Post that she was interested in having a staycation at a local hotel, because she was bored at home and was longing for a change of air.
However, she still hadn’t done so because the number of confirmed cases was still rising, and she also had doubts that the health and safety protocols were being properly applied.
“I also heard from a friend that some people who were COVID-19 positive voluntarily [self-isolated] at hotels that were not appointed as quarantine hotels, so I am being more careful,” Rahmasari said.
She was instead thinking about going glamping, as such sites would be semi-outdoors and so the air circulation was better, but she was still hesitant.
The main reason was because Rahmasari had a daughter who was almost four-and-a-half years old. She was also worried that, if she went on a staycation with her husband and daughter, they would eventually come back to the house they shared with her elderly mother.
“I’m thinking about a young child and an elderly person that I am responsible for, so I have to be more cautious,” she said.
