Tourism in the historic city of Lublin in Poland was in a deep lull last month when Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine, sending tens of thousands of people fleeing across the country’s eastern border, some 60 miles away .
Suddenly, rooms filled up in hotels as buses full of cloudy-eyed refugees – mostly women and children – arrived in the city center in search of food and shelter.
The crisis is forcing local travel agents and businesses in Lublin to scramble to provide transport, accommodation and food to ensure every refugee has decent living conditions upon arrival. Bus companies are offering free rides, hotels have pledged to provide free temporary accommodation, and workers are collecting basic necessities for refugees who have often had to leave everything behind.
Their efforts are part of a huge grassroots movement across Poland – and beyond – as individuals and businesses scramble to raise funds, collect donations and volunteer their time to help Ukrainians who have fled the invasion of their country by Russia.
“We have a whole army here, a network of hotel connections that works like a 24-hour crisis team, quickly communicating with each other to check room availability and sending Ukrainians to each other,” he said. Marta Koman, director of the Arche Hotel Lublin. Arche Hotels, a Polish hotel chain, has pledged over $1 million to provide free temporary accommodation to Ukrainian refugees at its 16 sites in Poland.
“Such help requires a lot of money, but these are special situations. I hope we don’t have to escape too,” she said, referring to the prospect of war spreading to Poland.
Intervene as translators and childcare workers
The scene at the Arche Hotel is emblematic of the general situation in Lublin and other towns and cities along the Polish border.
Staff have been thrust into new roles, working around the clock as translators and childcare workers, handling logistics or simply providing emotional support to arriving refugees. They say they are unable to think about the impact of war on their livelihoods.
“I’m not thinking about tourism, just opening the door and helping people,” said Anna Kurkowska, waitress at Arche Hotel Lublin. Besides serving food to incoming Ukrainians, she also helps babysit their children.
Among the refugees who stayed at the hotel: a group of children from a Ukrainian orphanage. L’Arche turned one of its conference rooms into a games room where they showed fairy tales on TV and played games like hide and seek and tag.
Witalij Proszyn, a Ukrainian-born waiter, also worked as a translator. He said many people arriving were emotional and in great distress, with staff scrambling to help.
“I don’t know if it’s still a hotel, that’s for sure, but it’s also now a single family home,” he said. “This is how I feel.”
Not all hotel companies have joined in the effort, and some hotels have raised prices during the crisis. At the Hilton Garden Inn in Rzeszów, not far from the Polish border in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, rooms that cost around $80 were suddenly over $200, according to the hotel’s website. At the Victoria Hotel in Lublin, rooms that used to cost between $40 and $60 now cost more than $140, according to its website. Governments have also block-booked hotel rooms and transport services for their staff, who often do not show up, causing accommodation shortages and contributing to rising prices.
Andrei Kuskovec, a 14-year-old from Ukraine’s Rivno region who is now housed at L’Arche, began to breathe heavily as he described the moment he ran away from home with his mother and three siblings. . They had to leave behind his father and a brother. (The Ukrainian government has ordered that men between the ages of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country.)
“Dad came over and said, ‘Get dressed, in five minutes you’ll be leaving,'” Andrei recalled. “He could come with us, but he didn’t want to leave behind my brother who is 22 years old. If they decide to let the men go, my brother will come too, but for now, that’s how it is.
In the lobby of the Arche Hotel, a Ukrainian woman was shaking and crying. She was on the phone with her parents in Ukraine when she heard an explosion on the line and the connection was lost. She hadn’t been able to reach her husband and daughter for over a day and didn’t know if they were alive. When Ms. Koman, the hotel manager, approached her, the woman showed her pictures on her phone and said, “this is my house, this is my house”, pointing to a Russian tank next to his house.
“We are professionals, but we are also people who have emotions, feelings, and to see these people suffer and to be fully professional is really very difficult, but I think you have to adapt to the new situation,” said Mrs Koman.
“The war stopped everything”
A month ago, local tour operators and tourist boards had begun to express optimism about a post-pandemic recovery, receiving travel inquiries from international groups and business travelers interested in visiting Poland after a hiatus. two years. Tourists spent more than $110 million in Lublin in 2019, according to Poland’s Central Statistical Office. Now many fear that the war threatens any prospect of a rebound this spring and summer. They are preparing for an uncertain future, even as they currently focus on the plight of refugees.
“The outbreak of war stopped everything,” said Krzysztof Raganowicz, director of the Lublin Metropolitan Tourism Organization. “As a city and a region, we always lose when something disturbing happens beyond the eastern border of the country, even if it is completely safe in our city. Tourists prefer to choose places far from any danger to quiet vacation.
As the war approaches its third week, some tour operators are exploring ways to help refugees over the coming months. A local initiative run in conjunction with the tourism organization aims to launch “guided city tours” to show newcomers the key institutions in the area, including hospitals, schools and local government buildings. They also plan to organize cultural trips for children to museums, galleries and other local sites.
FlixBus, a German company that provides intercity bus services in Europe, is offering free rides to refugees arriving at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Free trips are also available for those arriving from Bucharest, the Romanian capital.
“Our priority is to help people coming from Ukraine and to help where it is most urgent,” said Michał Leman, general manager of FlixBus in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states of Estonia. from Latvia and Lithuania.
“Currently most of our buses on the Przemyśl and Rzeszów routes are fully occupied, partly by passengers who bought tickets before the free trips became available, and partly by people who requested such a ride “, did he declare. “We are monitoring the situation closely and will increase the number of connections for free travel if necessary.”
The Ilan Hotel in Lublin, in a building that once housed a yeshiva, was turned into a hotel by the Warsaw Jewish Religious Community, who manages it. The hotel has blocked off its 40 rooms for refugees and is using its facilities to collect household items that will help them settle.
“We are in a completely different industry, but at the moment we are completely focused on helping refugees,” said Agnieszka Kolibska, the hotel manager. “At first it was immediate help for a few days, but now we’re also thinking about long-term help like finding jobs for people.”
“They really need everything from panties to socks and shoes because the suitcases they had with them had to be left behind because there was no room on the train for their bags,” Ms Kolibska said. . “It’s not like they come with a suitcase and bags – they have two buns in black plastic bags and that’s it.”
Sending help from further afield
Larger travel agencies have also joined in the effort to provide facilities and services to refugees. Airbnb, in partnership with its nonprofit arm Airbnb.org, has worked with hosts to provide free temporary housing for up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine to neighboring countries including Poland, Hungary and Romania. .
Thousands of people around the world have also booked and paid for Airbnbs in Ukraine, without intending to travel there, with the aim of sending money to Ukrainian owners. Between March 2 and March 3, more than 61,000 nights were booked in Ukraine, including 34,000 by people in the United States, the company reported.
Paige Holden, 43, an interior designer from Los Angeles, was initially skeptical of the initiative, fearing that if she booked an Airbnb property, hosts would not be able to access the funds. But after contacting some of them and seeing their desperation, she immediately booked an apartment in a Kiev property, which sent $4,700 to a family of five.
“After sending in a survey, a woman from Kiev sent me a photo of her three young children, huddled in a cold, dark basement full of other distraught families,” Ms Holden said.
“You have to remember that these people have lost everything overnight, their homes, their income, all they have to do is fight for their lives,” she said.
Over the past week, Benjamin Wagner, 27, a part-time tour guide and history student based in Berlin, has driven refugees from that city’s central station to host families across the city, making volunteering via a WhatsApp group.
“Right now it doesn’t matter where you come from, what you do or where you work,” Wagner said. “We all have a collective responsibility to help our Ukrainian brothers and sisters. This humanitarian crisis affects us all, and tomorrow we could be in their place.
Magdalena Chodownik reported from Lublin, Poland.
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