The Government’s hotel quarantine booking portal is now live

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• Track says:

  12 Feb12 February 09:55

  In Hong Kong the paying customers received status night credits (at least from Marriott). In Singapore, passengers had choices such as Grand Hyatt and Mandarin Oriental at some point. Australia was more of a bingo, from IC Sydney to some 2* hotels.

  Meanwhile, FT reports: UK’s Covid quarantine hotel booking system crashes.

  • Olly says:

    12 Feb12 February 09:58

    Did they have a choice of was it just those hotels were on the list?

    • BP says:

      12 Feb12 February 10:42

      Singapore is the luck of the draw. No choice. You could be in 5* luxury or a mouldy 2* hotel. People figured out that the system could be gamed by having a medical letter saying you needed access to fresh air. Then you got a 4 or 5* hotel with balcony.

• ChrisW says:

  12 Feb12 February 10:12

  As someone mentioned before, given you can presumably choose a hotel when you go to book online, it would have been great to allow hotels to compete for the business. This would allow quarantine guests to choose to pay more for a better room/property (with the cheapest £1,750 always available as an option). Hotels could have offered deluxe f&b packages, better wifi/movies. They could potentially include exercise equipment in the rooms etc.

  With so many thousands of empty hotel rooms around the country this could have been an opportunity for hotels to make some money and give quarantining passengers more choice and a better experience.

  The bog-standard Heathrow hotels are grim at the best of times. Being locked up for 10 days in February there makes me shudder.

  • Ben says:

    12 Feb12 February 10:14

    What a great idea! Not that I will be using them but if i had to, the thought of a running machine in the room would make life that little bit more bearable

  • Aston100 says:

    12 Feb12 February 10:40

    ***The bog-standard Heathrow hotels are grim at the best of times. Being locked up for 10 days in February there makes me shudder.***
    In which case you could say this acts as a form of deterrence against unnecessary travel?

    • ChrisW says:

      12 Feb12 February 10:57

      If you’ve never stayed in one of these hotels you wouldn’t know how bad it is, or how poor value what you are paying for is.

      The Australian hotel quarantine cost is similar to the UK but they are using proper five star hotels (Sofitels, Grand Hyatts, ICs etc)

  • meta says:

    12 Feb12 February 15:00

    It seems they only take Amex, MC and Visa. What if people only have Diners Club, Discover, JCB or Maestro cards?

• Dr C says:

  12 Feb12 February 10:24

  Wonder what pathetic things they will dream up next!

• Anna says:

  12 Feb12 February 10:26

  Government already backtracking, now saying people will be allowed out for fresh air, exercise etc. As Kier Starmer commented the other day, Matt Hancock and co have been making “empty threats”.

  Also no plans to test hotel staff and security – what could possibly go wrong?!

  • Track says:

    12 Feb12 February 10:32

    Oh Dear, Australian experience had plenty cases from from staff working at quarantine hotels… the most recent is Melbourne hotel, where they now have to rip off floors and fittings..

    • Dr C says:

      12 Feb12 February 13:11

      Now that is just pathetic

  • Aston100 says:

    12 Feb12 February 10:43

    The threat of a 10 year prison sentence was laughable and completely undermined the effort.
    And now the proposal of being kept in your room for the whole time without being allowed out was equally unlikely and did nothing to make people want to take it seriously.

    So obviously these kind of empty and unworkable threats were always going to lead to back peddling and further undermine any confidence in the government.
    Do they not have any advisors who are attached to reality that they can consult with before putting their foots in their mouths?

    • Anna says:

      12 Feb12 February 10:48

      They’ve done this consistently throughout the pandemic, despite the plethora of legal advice which must be available to them, e.g. having to back track on the original £10k fines for breaches which now have to be means tested at court. Anyone with any experience of how the justice system works knows how hard it is to get £10k out of someone. By contrast Keir Starmer as former DPP knows exactly what will and won’t happen in terms of what the police and courts can do.

      • Anna says:

        12 Feb12 February 10:49

        https://metro.co.uk/2021/02/06/kent-test-centre-staff-warned-over-drug-taking-and-sexual-encounters-14033044/

        I don’t hold out much hope for the effectiveness of quarantine if they use this lot 🤣

    • Lady London says:

      12 Feb12 February 12:18

      Well the wealthy using private jets won’t be flying back into Farnborough that’s for sure.

      I wonder which airports outside of the UK the private pilots will be using as staging posts? otherwise plenty of other places around the UK for those who might have bern persuaded to consider an option of paying much more for a better experience but will just walk round the system now.

    • Rob says:

      12 Feb12 February 12:31

      No-one with a decent brain works for civil service money in Central London when you can earn literally 5-10 times more in even an average banking or consultancy job.

      • JG says:

        12 Feb12 February 13:01

        No need to be insulting! Money isn’t everything.

        • Genghis says:

          12 Feb12 February 14:07

          🙂 Was Rob’s response to this moderated and removed by Rhys?

      • The Savage Squirrel says:

        12 Feb12 February 13:17

        By the same logic, are you suggesting that all the doctors in London – on a similar pay scale to the civil service – are 3rd rate morons? All the unversity researchers too…..

        People choose careers on many other factors besides money. Only those with the blinkered mindset of the financial world would think that the attractiveness of a career is defined only by its salary.

        • Rob says:

          12 Feb12 February 14:00

          I think that medicine or research has a higher calling which the civil service doesn’t have. Never heard a kid say they want to be a civil servant when they grow up.

          London GPs tend to do private work on the side, of course. Ours does private appointments at £200 / 30 minutes. One of those per weekday and it is another £50k in the bank.

      • SH says:

        12 Feb12 February 14:40

        Until a couple of years ago I worked as a civil servant in Whitehall. Despite a decade of pay restraint the wages weren’t bad – over £50k at age 25 may not be high for this site but is fairly good going statistically even if you have to pay for a season ticket to get into the office.

        In that time I developed major new policies which helped vulnerable people, I worked closely with Cabinet Ministers, wrote papers for the Prime Minister, and was arguably trusted with work of a level of importance that I would have been considered too young or inexperienced for by most employers. It was hard work but fun, too. I never felt like I wasted a minute of my working day, despite the low pay I felt appreciated by my superiors and by Ministers themselves, and the job I did helped improve people’s lives.

        I read this site every single morning. I used it to earn points while I was a civil servant as best I could despite not generating masses and masses of points through digital advertising purchases or paying tons of tax to HMRC on cards contrary to card T&Cs…

        All the time I’ve been reading HFP I’ve never really found Rob to put a foot wrong editorially, until now. The civil servants who work in Whitehall are working really hard for their country while receiving very little thanks for it – and criticising them like this is just crass.

        • ChrisC says:

          12 Feb12 February 16:00

          I’ve worked with a number of civil servants from Whitehall and they all had excellent brains and critical thinking skills. Some had been private secretaries to Ministers and a Secretary of State and worked on specialist policy areas.

          They are not what most peope think as civil servants – working in job centres doing basic admin tasks.

          I have also worked with some highly expensive management consultants who could barely string a coherant argument together for changing a proces or restructuring an organisation. Another cut and pasted from a document we had already prepared and they tried to pass it off as their own work but they forgot to correct the typo from the original.

          If civil service and NHS staff had been allowed to develop track and trace it would cost far less that the private sector and would have actually worked.

        • The Savage Squirrel says:

          12 Feb12 February 17:57

          I was in the same school year as the current Cabinet Secretary. Definitely a “decent brain”. On 90k a year – public info – which may be chicken-feed in an investment banker macho earnings willy-waving contest, but in the real world it’s worth remembering this is in the top 3% of all UK earners so not at all a bad living. Mind you, I earn more (willy waved!) and don’t have to put up with Boris every day, so he probably is significantly underpaid.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          12 Feb12 February 19:49

          Boris complains he earned more writing arrows for papers 🙂

          I agree it’s not always about money but it helps when the work is boring.

        • 1ATL says:

          13 Feb13 February 04:22

          +1
          I think someone is becoming rather complacent with his website footfall. Didn’t Gerald Ratner have a similar complacency?

        • Malte says:

          13 Feb13 February 17:54

          Completely agree – frankly an embarrassing and antisocial post from Rob. Not that I’m terribly surprised after the editorial tone taken here in recent months, and not that he will care. Disappointing.

        • Cat says:

          15 Feb15 February 19:52

          I don’t know – a number of my Trinity friends became civil servants – one worked in the Cabinet Office, one became the British Ambassador to Mongolia, one is now very high up at HMRC. They mostly liked their jobs (not so much the one who worked at the Cabinet Office recently – she quit this year). What they do is essential – they help to form public policy.

          Not everyone wants to become a banker, Rob.

          @The Savage Squirrel – I know Headcase too (as we called him then), we both rowed for 1st & 3rd.

      • Aston100 says:

        12 Feb12 February 16:57

        Wow, that’s pretty harsh Rob.

        • SP says:

          12 Feb12 February 17:19

          Yeah, I think that’s a bit of a low blow from Rob. Pretty disappointing.

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        12 Feb12 February 21:07

        Hmmm

        Cant see that being a comment you choose to frame at the end of year look back of your highlights

      • Sarah says:

        14 Feb14 February 14:27

        I’m a long term user of this blog and a former civil servant. This is widely offensive. Also, I earned about 20% more in the private sector not those multiples. I suppose I only have half a brain though.

      • Ryan says:

        16 Feb16 February 11:18

        Bit rich from someone who makes a living buying printer cartridges at Tesco in return for a few air miles.

  • ChrisW says:

    12 Feb12 February 11:52

    Hopefully this is limited to a single, one-hour supervised period outside each day. They shouldn’t be allowed out multiple times a day just because they are bored.

    • Anna says:

      12 Feb12 February 14:12

      We don’t even know what legislation it’s going to fall under yet; unless it’s specially defined they can go in and out as much as they like, this isn’t Australia!

    • Optimus Prime says:

      12 Feb12 February 14:15

      In that case I hope smokers aren’t allowed to go out multiple times either.

      • Track says:

        12 Feb12 February 17:38

        But what are you proposing to do: hotels are 100% smoking-free. Windows usually blocked from being opened. If they smoke in bathrooms, that will go into ventilation.

        It is inhumane to insist 1 time/a day is enough.

        • Lady London says:

          12 Feb12 February 18:08

          Hotels and office buildings generally are going to have to stop recirculating air and provide fresh air.

          I hate hotels with windows that don’t open and never, ever book again if I accidentally land in one.

          People getting infected with other people’s covid during quarantine in a hotel that allows rooms to receive air that’s not fresh or at least cleaned to HEPA standard means to me the hotel is not fit for purpose. Ditto hospitals and old people’s homes and any communal accommodation.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          12 Feb12 February 19:51

          Australian authorities sealed up windows for quarantine. What a stupid thing to do.

          Unless it has opening windows it shouldn’t be used for quarantine

        • Littlefish says:

          12 Feb12 February 21:02

          @ Lady London nails this. Not one thing I have seen on these quarantine hotels (and indoor spaces generally) leads me to be comfortable the UK government even understands the likelihood they will provide for extra infections by passing virus in the air.
          Its been known about for months and relatively easy to de-risk … some of which takes time and money and innovation.

        • Cat says:

          15 Feb15 February 20:28

          Exactly Lady London, well said. It’ll be the Diamond Princess all over again.

    • Chrisasaurus says:

      12 Feb12 February 21:08

      I’m assuming this is about Rob posting!

• Aston100 says:

  12 Feb12 February 10:49

  So this scheme has potential for being another case of cronyism.
  Add to all the others we’ve seen in the last 12 months.
  I am honestly amazed at how blatant some of the cronyism / corruption has been. These kind of activities would likely have brought down governments of the past.

  • Anna says:

    12 Feb12 February 11:50

    It’s also not clear about whether the government will be on the hook for the entire cost if very few people ending up using the scheme and just stay away for the next few months!

  • Rob says:

    12 Feb12 February 12:30

    I hope you’re not suggesting that Matt Hancock’s local pub’s ex-landlord getting a £30m contract to supply PPE was not straight up?

  • Yolo says:

    12 Feb12 February 14:11

    There’s no corruption in the UK, only in the EU. It’s been pointed out in this blog’s comments many times.

• Jonny Price says:

  12 Feb12 February 10:51

  This whole thing is completely pointless and impractical – I think the government has only implemented this due to (misinformed) pressure from the media and opposition politicians.

  Direct passenger flights from these “red list” countries are already banned, so if I’m a UK resident in one of these places trying to get home, I have to fly indirect – mixing with two planes worth of people (and mixing with people at three different airports) in the process. Let’s say I fly DXB-DUB-LHR or CPT-DOH-LHR I’m likely to be sitting next to people on the flights who will not have to hotel quarantine. Also who is going to check my forms if I arrive at LHR from DUB? There is currently no test requirement on arrivals in the UK from Ireland.

  What is the point?!

• kitten says:

  12 Feb12 February 12:41

  can anybody point us to where is the day 2 and 10 test requirement officially specified and what type of test is acceptable?

  • meta says:

    12 Feb12 February 14:13

    You need to order it via government portal. It gets mailed to you, you don’t get to choose.

    • meta says:

      12 Feb12 February 14:15

      Here’s the link https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-quarantine-when-you-arrive-in-england

• ChrisC says:

  12 Feb12 February 12:53

  What about practical issues like people doing laundry

  Do any of these still unnamed hotels have washing machines people can use or will it be a case of sending out for expensive dry cleaning or rinsing your pants in the bathroom sink?

  • meta says:

    12 Feb12 February 14:16

    I think I read somewhere that 10 pieces of laundry per week is included.

    • Anna says:

      12 Feb12 February 17:03

      So basically your underwear for the stay …

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        12 Feb12 February 21:10

        10 changes of underwear in only 10 days? Ooh lad-de-dah!

        • Lady London says:

          13 Feb13 February 03:09

          Erghhh!

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