JACKSONVILLE, Fla — Vaccination sites keep changing.
In January, Jacksonville went from one vaccination location to three, then back to one. This is just the beginning of vaccinations. Where will people get vaccinated when it opens to the general public?
The American Hotel and Lodging Association President says hotels would be the perfect space. CEO Chip Rogers says hotels have parking, space, refrigeration and are open 24-7. These are all things hotels have and vaccinations sites need.
"It just seems quite easy that this would be a good recipe for rolling out the vaccine quicker," Rogers says.
Rogers says the pandemic has been devastating for the hotel industry. He says hotels are uniquely fit to help out with this problem. With business down, they have the room to move vaccinations like this into their facilities.
“If you go back to last year January, we would have never been able to do this because hotels were filled and the meeting rooms were being used," says Rogers. "Right now we are at a very specific time in history, hopefully, we are never at this time again, but right now hotels are sitting empty so let’s use them for the best purposes.”
Bloomberg is tracking vaccinations around the world and reports more than 33 million Americans have been vaccinated as of Feb. 2.
That still leaves hundreds of millions more to be vaccinated. Rogers says he’s talked to all the major hotel chains and they're in!
He says he’s even pitched it to elected leaders at state levels. He hopes once they ramp up vaccinations that hotels can be a solution to the problem.
“Look this is not going to increase the occupancy at any hotel but what it will do is allow us to get through this process quicker," says Rogers. "If we can get through this process quicker with more people vaccinated safely in a more timely manner, that just means the economy comes back faster. People start traveling more. It helps all of us.”
This is part two of a larger project called Hospitality for Hope where at the beginning of the pandemic about 20,000 hotels got involved to house healthcare workers traveling to hot spot areas.
We have reached out to the Department of Health spokesperson about this idea. We have not received a response at the time of this story airing. If we do receive a response, we will update this story.