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Schrager’s Public Hotel Is NYC’s First to Mandate Vaccines

Schrager’s Public Hotel Becomes NYC’s First With Vaccine Mandate

New York City’s Public Hotel will become the first to insist all guests, visitors and staff are vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus, owner Ian Schrager said this week.

Schrager, co-founder of Studio 54, the discotheque and nightclub popular in the late 1970s, is often credited with inventing the modern boutique hotel. He said he intended to impose the policy beginning Sept. 5, with all guests over 12 required to show a vaccine card or passport providing proof of inoculation.

“The health, safety and well being of our guests and staff is the only thing that matters to us,” Schrager said. “Our guests will be able to relax, enjoy and experience the hotel and all of the exciting things it has to offer in the knowledge they won’t get sick or make anyone else sick.”

Schrager’s Public Hotel Is NYC’s First to Mandate Vaccines

Schrager’s decision came even though hotels have so far been exempt from Mayor Bill de Blasio’s citywide edict requiring proof of vaccination for everyone attending or working inside restaurants, gyms, theaters and other indoor event spaces. While hotels mostly feature guests staying in individual rooms, many properties offer town square-like lobbies, restaurants, bars, as well as gyms and event spaces.

Vijay Dandapani, president of the Hotel Association of New York City, confirmed that Schrager was the only hotel owner in the city who has required vaccinations of all guests and workers.

“Nobody else is offering and nobody plans it,” Dandapani said of Schrager’s restriction. “Hotels have a sub-section of customers who don’t like the idea.”

City officials will discuss whether to extend the city’s current vaccine mandate to hotels in a telephone conference Monday, Dandapani said. Hotel owners don’t want to be held liable if guests present false vaccine certificates at check-in, he said.

Schrager’s Public Hotel Is NYC’s First to Mandate Vaccines

The 367-room Public Hotel near the Bowery on Manhattan’s lower East Side, opened in 2017 and closed during the height of the pandemic to undergo renovation and reopen in June. It features bars on its roof top and lobby, three restaurants and space for private parties and business meetings and a 100-seat theater/screening room.

“We already have 80% of our staff vaccinated, which is consistent with the area, and we haven’t gotten any push back yet,” Schrager said in an interview. The most important issue, he said, was the public health and potentially life-saving benefit to getting as many people vaccinated as possible.

“It’s regrettable that the whole issue has been politicized by people who are anti-vaccination,” he said.

Schrager’s Public Hotel Is NYC’s First to Mandate Vaccines

The city’s hotel industry is struggling to regain the prosperity it enjoyed before the pandemic when New York was the top tourist destination in the U.S., attracting more than 60 million visitors a year. The city’s hotels, which averaged a summer occupancy rate of about 90% in 2018 and 2019, were about 63% full in June, with an actual room-use rate of 50% when taking into account scores of closed hotels containing hundreds of rooms, according to CoStar, a real estate data analytics company.

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