The Hurricane Katrina Stories at Windsor Hospitality Group's Embassy Suites Houston Look Like They W

• 
  SAVE
• 
  SHARE
• 
  TEXT SIZE
• 
  PRINT
• 
  COMMENT
• 
  PDF

. October 14, 2008

HOUSTON, TX, September 15, 2005.Despite all of the grim news about Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, this is an appropriate time to highlight one of the positive stories and it comes from WHG's Embassy Suites Houston-Southwest Freeway. That property has hosted as many as 300 Gulf Coast evacuees in the last two weeks. Most of them have come from Slidell, where the hurricane touched ground, and New Orleans. Windsor Corporate and the Houston property team have collaborated to provide those guests, who have lost everything, at least a little comfort, practical support and a safe place to stay.

"Herman Turk worked with Houston's GM Rene Ramos early-on to make sure we did not price gouge the guests, including going into the system and reducing some rates," said VP of Sales Mark Goeman. Ramos adds, "We started with at least 150 rooms full of evacuees for probably 300 people and since last in the last week-and-a- half, that number has gone down to 50 rooms per night for about 150 people." He currently has one room with one person and the others are filled with families of anywhere from three to six people per room.

The property team has gone to great lengths to make it easier for everyone to get the assistance they need. "The staff has done a wonderful job in that any organization that has offered assistance, we print out their fliers and lay them on the banquet tables in the lobby so they can help themselves," said Ramos. "Some of those organizations are the Red Cross, social services, FEMA, churches providing food, the local schools that said they will take the kids in class, locations where they can get food stamps and anything we could." Mary Erickson, the hotel's guest services manager, purchased a variety of games from the local dollar store to occupy the children. According to to watching television in their hotel room. It gives the parents some to time take a break

as well.

Julie Ringer with Windsor Corporate developed and executed a plan for WHG to provide Ramos with more than $1000 in Wal-Mart gift certificates to distribute at his discretion to families who needed to purchase some necessities, such as diapers.

Considering how many people have been completely cut-off from family members and friends who may have evacuated as well or stayed behind, Ramos worked with Wayport to provide a free internet connection for the guests with laptops. "For the folks without computers, we let them use the computers in the office for increments of 10-15 minutes so they could get in touch with their family," Ramos said.

"We had a few guests who had lost track of relatives, but over the weekend they found that those relatives were at the Astrodome or in centers in Baton Rouge," said Ramos. "On Monday night and Tuesday morning last week, they were reunited."

For those who need medical attention, Ramos and his team provide the hotel van gratis for anyone who needs transport to the local hospital or medical clinic.

The hotel and a number of its local organizations have underwritten a light dinner for the families every evening. "The people in this area have been great," says Ramos. Last Wednesday night, the evacuees dined courtesy of Chipotle Restaurant. "That same day, a lady came in to book a Christmas party and saw the signs that we were serving dinner for the evacuated families. She talked to her church and they brought dinner for 150 people on Thursday."

"Everyone here has the same story, everything is gone. They have only what they were able to load up and leave with." Windsor Hospitality Group is proactively finding ways to help those stories take a happier turn.