Inside the quarantine hotel where UK arrivals will spend 10 days for £1,750
New arrivals at Heathrow Airport will be escorted to this three-star Ibis hotel for an 11-night stay, as part of the country’s new quarantine programme.
Guests won’t be able to relax at the bar or eat in the dining areas, as they will be stuck in their dooms for 10 whole days, with airline food brought to their doors.
They will be required to change their own sheets and towels, and the must be accompanied by security if they want to go outside for some fresh air or a cigarette.
Travellers will each have to pay £1,750 for the privilege – a rate set by the Government for the new rules, which come into force on Monday.
It is a big hike compared to the 125-room hotel’s usual fee of £60 per night for a standard room including breakfast.
The Ibis Styles London Heathrow East is a 12-minute drive from Terminals 2 and 3 and is expected to be closed to ordinary guests during the quarantine scheme.
Yesterday 12 medical bins, used to test waste produced by guests, were spotted being assembled outside the building, MailOnline reports.
The hotel has an average rating of 4.4 on Google, with recent guests calling it ‘nice and quiet’ and ‘beautifully clean’.
Another said they ‘felt very safe staying here despite the coronavirus pandemic.
But one reviewer on Expedia wrote: ‘The room was cold and the heater did not work.
‘When I mentioned this matter to the reception I was told to wait until the room becomes warm but it never did.’
On Tuesday Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that UK and Irish residents landing in England would have to isolate in a hotel if they have anywhere on the Government’s travel ‘red-list’ in the past 10 days.
Currently there are 33 countries on the list, which was crafted in a bid to keep out more transmissible mutant variants of coronavirus including the South Africa strain.
Foreign citizens without residency rights are already banned from coming to the UK from these high-risk countries.
While Border Force can’t automatically check where people have arrived from, those found to be lying on their passenger locator form could be punished with a £10,000 fine, 10 years in prison, or both.
Just hours after going online, the website used by travellers to book their stay in a quarantine hotel crashed.
An error message told visitors the site was down for ‘maintenance’. The site previously told people booking that there were no rooms available for the first two days of restrictions.
In guidance about manged quarantine on the Gov.uk website, a message says: ‘Due to a minor technical issue, the link to the booking portal in this guidance will not be available until later today. Please return to this page later if you wish to make a booking.
The three-star Thistle is another hotel near Heathrow expected to be on the Government’s list of quarantine hotels.
An airline worker, who lives nearby, said: ‘It wouldn’t be my first choice for somewhere to stay, put it that way.
‘I know you don’t get much of a choice where you quarantine but that hotel looks very old now and not very welcoming. It isn’t in the best of state, either, and it’s a little depressing if you ask me.’
The hotel has a rating of 3.5 out of 5 on TripAdvisor. One visitor who stayed in November said the place looked ‘tired and in need of refurbishment’.
But they praised the ‘great, helpful staff’ and ‘comfortable restaurant with good food’. Metro.co.uk has contacted the hotel’s management.
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