Israel-Hamas War: Hotels go the extra mile to help evacuees

In a country known for its slow-moving bureaucracy, where things can take forever, the rapid response and immediate problem-solving since October 7 have been astounding.

Nowhere do you see this more than in the hotels, which have transformed from spas, resorts, business centers, and tourist attractions to venues where those displaced by the war – particularly those from kibbutzim who are used to a certain communal lifestyle – can hang their hat and call it home.

A little girl with long pigtails descends from the school bus, runs into the hotel, and embraces Herods Tel Aviv hotel manager Racheli Amsalem. It is the first of many warm greetings that the Givatayim resident and mother of two receives from youngsters, mostly Kibbutz Nir Am evacuees, have given her throughout the day.

Along with her other managerial duties, she keeps a watchful eye on the children, granting permission to one nine-year-old boy to throw a water balloon in the parking lot. She recounts how she recently rushed upstairs and grabbed two babies from the hotel’s makeshift daycare center and brought them to a shelter when a siren sounded. 

“No, no, no!” Amsalem warns a five-year-old boy as he attempts to climb onto a tabletop in a room that has been converted from a Tel Aviv beach view conference center to a playground for children who have finished their schoolwork and have returned “home” to let off some steam. Other children are drawing, some playing table soccer on the donated foosball table, while others are chasing one another around the room.

The room is lined with books and toys, all donated by caring volunteers.

“Kibbutz members are used to communal activities,” she explains. “It is their way of life. We give them whatever they need to feel at home. We host after-school activities that include guitar, soccer, theater, and playing Code Monkey, a computer math game. After the children go to bed, there are activities for the adults as well.”

Once a floor full of hotel suites, the area was converted into daycare facilities for children from three months to a year and a half old, and for pre-kindergarten children, ages two to five. Little shoes are lined up in front of a doorway, and a rack holding knapsacks is adjacent to a virtual parking lot of strollers by the elevator.

Keeping a community intact

At Fattal Hotels, 41 babies have been born, with more on the way. At one point, the chain organized and is hosting 48 nursery/kindergartens, as well as a school for grades 1-7 at the Leonardo Dead Sea; Zoom classes at the Leonardo Club Eilat Hotel; a boys’ high school at the Leonardo Jerusalem Plaza; and a Chabad school for grades 1-6 at the Leonardo Dead Sea. Other children board buses from the hotels and have been acculturated into nearby schools.

Although Nir Am was not invaded by Hamas terrorists, the proximity of the kibbutz exposed it to constant rocket barrages. Herods Tel Aviv, one of Fattal’s 47 local hotels, is the chain chosen by the state to help keep that community intact.

“They came dressed in whatever they happened to be wearing,” Amsalem recalls. “Some had no shoes. We received donations and opened free stores for them. At first, the residents of Nir Am began going to three or four funerals a day for friends from nearby communities.”

Avia Magen, managing director of all the Fattal Hotels in Israel, explains that the hotel’s “command center” was activated on Saturday, October 7, calling together regional managers who oversee marketing, sales, executive divisions, maintenance, purchasing, and human resources in different areas. They assessed the immediate needs of the evacuees assigned to their hotels, and reviewed each hotel to configure the space and customize amenities to fit the communities. The task was formidable but was executed quickly.

“In this situation, there was no normal,” Magen elaborates. “We are 47 hotels from Eilat to Tiberias, and suddenly we had a completely unexpected situation. The way the guests arrived, and the intensity of the situation were unprecedented. I didn’t have to explain to our team how to react or behave. The immediate response was, ‘What can we do to help?’”

So how does a short-term stay hotel convert to a place in which families can feel comfortable residing for many months?

“From the moment the situation became clear, I convened our managers’ forum and requested immediate preparation of hundreds of clean, ready rooms. We were not worried about what we would receive from the government or how or when [we would get paid]. 

“We were the first to announce that anyone already in our hotels who wanted to extend their stay would automatically receive a 50% discount. A few days later, the government set up a financing program for evacuees. As time passed and the war progressed, the government has approved more areas for evacuation to hotels on their dime. They continue to extend the length of their stay.”

According to Magen, policies that had been essential in the past suddenly became irrelevant. The rule prohibiting pets in hotels, for instance, was discarded to allow pets – dogs, cats and, in some cases, parrots – to accompany their families. Of course, this sparked new policies to ensure that these families manage their pets without adversely affecting other guests.

Washing machines, dryers, extra ovens, roll-away beds, cribs, nursing chairs, and extra clothing racks were procured. Even in the posh resort hotels, laundry rooms with free machines were installed on every floor. Laundry detergent was added to purchasing lists of hotel supplies.

“The changes have taken time to process,” explains Sigal, a resident of Kfar Maimon in the South. She is one of its community organizers living in the Leonardo Plaza Jerusalem with her husband and two daughters. “The hotel helped us deal with the shock and created an emotionally supportive environment for the children.”

A holistic therapist, Sigal likes to keep a positive attitude. However, she says, the lobby on Shabbat can be noisy with lots of children, and without the privacy of her own living room to relax in. But she says she is privileged to be spending so much time in the holy city of Jerusalem, and notes that the hotel is doing everything possible to maximize the family’s comfort.

“We recently went back to our home in Kfar Maiman for Shabbat. We prepared the children for the ‘booms’ that they were likely to hear from Gaza. It was lonely. Only farmers and security staff are still there.”

A company culture of caring

Magen says the rapid mobilization of staff members stems from the values put in place by David Fattal, CEO and founder of the Fattal Group, who stresses that contributing to community is a fundamental part of the Fattal culture and values. He frequently visits his hotels and advises his managers to expand the food selections for the evacuees staying at his facilities.

The chain, founded in 1999, is the largest hotel group in Israel, with some 67 hotels (48 active, 19 under construction). Fattal Hotels has also established itself as the largest Israeli hospitality group in Europe, owning 205 hotels (184 active, 21 under construction) in 20 countries throughout Europe, operating under the brands Leonardo, U, Herods, NYX, Rothschild 22, Limited Edition and 7Minds.

In addition to housing more than 20,000 evacuees in Israel, the hotel chain regularly sends donations to the battlefront, such as food, linens, toiletries, and even generators; offers accommodations to soldiers; and has hosted entire battalions for meals. The support for the October 7 tragedy extended throughout Fattal’s international hotels as well, with discounts for stranded Israelis and free rooms for families of abductees.

In every area, regional managers built teams of municipal leaders from schools, health, and social agencies to arrange services for the evacuees. They even brought in the security agencies to help retrieve lost ID cards. They joined community leaders from the evacuated communities to review building plans to allocate areas for daycare, schools, healthcare, and other needs; solicited and received donations; and sorted and distributed necessities such as clothing, toiletries, diapers, and breast pumps.

Hotels in the Dead Sea area that house traumatized members of communities that were attacked have been offering therapy rooms and extended social services.

“It’s not something we are used to doing,” Magen says. “We also set up branches of different healthcare services in our hotels. Various offices were in our halls, including a well-baby clinic and even a pub that we relocated from Kibbutz Nir Am to Herods Tel Aviv.”

She describes how their business hotels, originally geared for business travelers or intimate getaways, were converted to accommodate kindergartens, playgrounds, and laundry facilities. Fattal’s business hotels, which in the past offered bed and breakfast, changed to full-board meals, complete with breakfast sandwich stations. This enables parents to prepare their children’s school lunches, blend food for babies, and fix dairy dinners to reflect the needs of the residents.

“It changed the way we worked,” she says. “What helps them is the sense of community, since in most cases we have kept people from the same town or village together,” Magen elaborates.

Besides turning around quick solutions for shelter, laundry, school, and healthcare, Fattal Hotels even helped them find jobs. One person now works as a receptionist at the Leonardo Gordon Beach Tel Aviv; others have found employment as maintenance workers; and schoolteachers have offered private tutoring for children of the evacuees and hotel staff.

“It is as if our area managers have become mayors in little villages,” Magen says.

Along with the community, each hotel creates events, such as Kabbalat Shabbat, shows with headline entertainment, and holiday extravaganzas. And residents have held appreciation parties for hotel staff. 

Sudden transition to hotel life

“How will seven people get along in one small hotel room, we wondered when we found ourselves at the hotel,” says Moriah Ben Hamo of Sderot. Moriah and her husband landed at the Leonardo Gordon Beach Hotel in Tel Aviv with their five children, aged two to 10. “At first we thought of staying in the city. My husband and I both work in Sderot, but shortly after October 7 there were alarms, crazy booms, and electric outages. We realized we had no choice.”

“We were worried about our home in Sderot. But the hotel housed us in two large rooms, and we are managing with the few things we brought from our home. Thank God, we are blessed with warm, enveloping, hugging staff who help us with our every request, and most importantly, give us a sense of security. 

“A hotel is not your home. Not your bed, not your kitchen. But the hotel has answered all our needs – a table for the girls to do their homework, Materna formula for the baby. One night, when I felt like cooking, they let me into the kitchen to make schnitzel for all the guests. Yesterday, in the lobby, the children were bored, so the staff found activities for them to do and gave them sweet treats.”

Notes Magen: “We try to help as much as possible. One woman told me she really misses cooking in her kitchen. We asked her what she would like to cook. She said her special Shabbat fish. So, we asked her for the ingredients, ordered them, and invited her to prepare her fish for her friends and family in our kitchen. Another woman missed baking cakes and cookies. These problems are easily solved.”

Nofit and Ariel Segev, Sderot residents housed at the Leonardo Gordon Beach in Tel Aviv with their five children, also had their special requests easily filled.

“We asked for a particular dish that reminds us of home, and the hotel chef and his team immediately took care of it,” Nofit recalls. “Even when it is complex, they find solutions for us. While it does not replace home – and we want very much to return – [the hotel staff] is considerate and does as much as possible to make us feel at home.” 

Fattal chain staff has so far helped the evacuees celebrate more than 17 brit milah/baby namings, over 30 bar and bat mitzvah celebrations, seven aliyot le’Torah, 34 “challah separation” ceremony events, several marriage proposals, many birthday parties, and at least six weddings. The staff is very involved with the residents and has forged close bonds with many of the guests.

“About a month ago, during my visit to Eilat, I stopped by our Leonardo Club Eilat Hotel and spoke with one of the guests who was pregnant,” Magen remembers. “When we parted, I wished her an easy birth and asked her to let me know when the baby arrived. She went into labor in the middle of that night. 

“Her husband had to stay at the hotel to look after their three older children, so she did what seemed perfectly natural – she called the hotel’s guest relations manager, Hila Biton, whom she had known for a month and a half. 

“Hila, a mother of six, didn’t think twice. She jumped out of bed and went straight to the hotel to drive the mother to the hospital to give birth. She stayed with the mother all night long and was by her side for the entire birth. 

“From two total strangers, within six weeks these two women had become the closest of friends. In the morning, I received the update: It’s a boy! I congratulated the new family and naturally told the new mother that the hotel would host the brit.”

At Fattal’s Leonardo Plaza in Jerusalem, one side of the lobby had memorials set up for the fallen residents of the South, while the other side of the lobby hosted a wedding.

Mobilizing resources 

Ortal Noah Moalam, CEO of the Leonardo Plaza Jerusalem, says the municipality and the Jerusalem Development Authority helped her assist the families at her hotel, where 80% of the guests are mostly from Kfar Maimon and Tushiya. She says they were fully booked for Sukkot, which is the hotel’s most important holiday. 

But with the onset of the war, tourists fled. Then, by Thursday, October 12, all 450 rooms at the Jerusalem hotel were fully booked with 700 guests, mostly evacuees. Moalam coordinated with her housekeeping staff to ensure that every room was ready for them.

“We understood immediately that things were not routine,” she recalls. “There was a lot of hugging. The staff was scared. On Sunday it was still the holiday, but that morning groups of soldiers came to eat. Everyone in the lobby stood, crying, and clapping for them.”

Jerusalem’s Mayor Moshe Lion asked Moalam how he could help. She asked for more parking in the neighborhood to accommodate the overflow of guests, and he complied immediately. Moalam cites the support from the Jerusalem Municipality and the Jerusalem Development Authority as one of the keys to the program’s success.

Recent government announcements predicting that by the second half of February evacuated communities from the South, whose homes are four to seven kilometers from the border, can expect to return home, were received with bittersweet reactions. One young boy went over to Amsalem and said that although he was eager to go home, he would miss her and the rest of the hotel staff.

Moalam says she hopes to visit her “new family” at Kfar Maimon once they have returned to their homes. Both she and Magen say that “day after” plans include swiftly rehabilitating the hotels, as the wear and tear of residency has taken a toll, for which they hope to receive financial support from the government. 

The Fattal Hotel chain is beginning to book for Passover. As there will still be evacuees from the border communities, it is recommended that Passover guests book early. ■

Inbal Hotel donates goods to evacuees

The five-star Inbal Hotel, in the heart of Jerusalem, found yet another way to contribute to the war effort.

The 335-room hotel, privately owned by two families, received the call to help and immediately opened its doors to 100 people, many from cities like Kiryat Shmona, according to Rony Timsit, the hotel’s general manager.

But it didn’t stop there. When the evacuees left, the hotel donated 82 rooms full of furniture to people who had lost their homes and were resettling. Just 1 Chesed, a Gush Etzion-based organization, managed 42 donations in January, helping the hotel to warehouse and distribute beds, tables, desks, easy chairs, and mini-refrigerators.

The timing was just right, according to Timsit. “We had scheduled the renovations for the end of October and the beginning of January. We donate [furnishings] every time that we are renovating, but this time we knew who the donations were helping.”

Timsit explained that because the renovations were already scheduled, and because they always worked with Israeli contractors, the Inbal Hotel was not affected by the construction manpower shortage due to the limitation of contractors from Judea and Samaria. 

“Everything worked by the book,” he said. “We didn’t close the hotel for even one day. When the people came, we reopened the pool, the restaurant, and the gym.”

All the renovations and refurbishments are expected to be completed in time for Passover.