Hotels are places of intersection, where people from all over the world meet and work. Globalisation stripped the importance of borders away and increased people’s mobility. Tuberculosis, an ancient disease, similarly pays no mind to borders and can be found in every nation. Tuberculosis takes lives everywhere; it affects everybody and doesn’t care about social class, age or gender. For that reason, Kempinski Hotels celebrated World TB Day for the sixth consecutive year. With properties across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Kempinski has the ability to raise awareness and has been committed to the fight against tuberculosis, together with the Stop TB Partnership, since 2008.

To mark World TB Day, Stop TB’s Craig David postcards were put on guests’ pillows during turndown service. Kempinski hotels’ executive teams served food to staff members at staff canteens while distributing informative flyers about tuberculosis. Hotel employees were given specifically designed in-house training sessions about tuberculosis, held by either the hotels’ training managers or in-house doctors or nurses.

Besides these “standard activities”, hotels organised original events for their staff to mark the day. Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City in Ghana invited Obour, also known as Osei-Kuffour, the Stop TB Ambassador for Ghana, and a popular musician during their last recruitment day, Friday 22 March, as a way to raise awareness to future employees about the disease. The pastry chef of Kempinski Hotel Das Tirol in Kitzbühel baked a special Stop TB cake for the employees while the Çırağan Palace in Istanbul put on a bowling tournament to mark the day.

Hotel Indonesia Kempinski conducted a special TB training session for not only their staff but also for the rest of their neighbourhood, Kebon Melati Community. As part of the training, the hotel invited a representative from Siloam Hospital to address the topic of tuberculosis in Indonesia. Kempinski Seychelles Resort did the same, asking a TB specialist from the Ministry of Health of Seychelles to speak to all employees. Grand Hotel Kempinski High Tatras invited the National Institute for Tuberculosis, Lung Diseases and Thoracic Surgery to raise awareness about tuberculosis to their employees.

Kempinski Hotel Grand Arena Bansko Bulgaria and Kempinski Hotel Zografski organised a football tournament in Sofia and raised awareness about TB amongst the students of the local tourism school. The hotels also distributed flyers with information and facts about TB. Kempinski Hotel Wuxi organised a badminton competition with its sister hotel in Yixing to raise awareness on TB and promoted Stop TB’s campaign with a LED screen on their roof.

Providing basic and essential knowledge about, changing behaviour towards and de-stigmatising tuberculosis amongst staff worldwide, as well as raising awareness in employees’ local communities, is the campaign’s objective every year. As a member of Stop TB’s private sector, we engage our workplaces and want to play a part in global efforts to fight tuberculosis.