Industry ‘kept in the dark’ over UK’s quarantine hotel scheme

Best Western Hotels boss accuses ministers of failing to plan properly for new system

Travellers in the international arrival area of Heathrow Airport. EPA

The boss of a major hotel chain accused the UK government of having no plan on the set-up of its hotel quarantine network.

The government announced on January 27 that travellers from a so-called red list of countries – where there is concern over new variants of the virus – would be forced to pay for mandatory 10-day isolation periods in an approved hotel.

Yet ministers are yet to pinpoint a start date and few details are available on how the system would operate.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson added to the confusion on Wednesday when he said that details would be announced on Thursday. Downing Street later corrected him and said that the plan would be outlined by Health Secretary Matt Hancock next week.

Best Western Hotels UK chief executive Rob Paterson said that the industry had been “kept in the dark” and was "yet to hear anything" from the government.

"In any normal company, if you went out and announced a programme nationally, you hadn't thought about how you were going to plan it, and you hadn't spoken to the people involved, I'm not sure I'd have a job," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

“It seems logical to me that you’d sit down with the airlines, the airport operators and the hotel operators and thrash this out on a Zoom call.”

A hotel quarantine system has been in place in countries such as Singapore, Australia and New Zealand since March last year.

“We’ve got all these contacts in other countries that could offer really valuable support and we’ve just been kept in the dark,” Mr Paterson said.

The industry has been 'left in the dark' over the hotel quarantine plan, according to the boss of Best Western hotels. Reuters

He said that officials needed to provide clarity over how many travellers would need accommodation.

“If you take a hotel that’s currently closed and they open it, there's a big expense to open that hotel. A hotelier is only going to open that hotel if there’s a genuine business need,” he said.

Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi defended the government’s robust border control measures, saying that hotel quarantine was just one layer of defence besides other measures, including mandatory self-isolation at home and the presentation of a negative Covid-19 test on arrival.

“Hotel quarantine is one part of that, it’s not a silver bullet in any way,” he said.

Mr Johnson said on Wednesday it was not practical to implement a complete shutdown of the UK's borders.

“When [Labour leader Keir Starmer] calls for a complete closure of borders or suggests that might be an option, he should be aware of the 75 per cent of our medicines coming to this country from the European continent, 45 per cent of our food, 250,000 businesses in this country rely on imports,” he told MPs.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon also criticised the UK government’s response at the border, saying it was inadequate given the potential dangers of the new Covid-19 variants.