Your Safety Is Our Top Priority

Why Book Direct?

Booking direct with us will ensures that we can communicate directly with you regarding any special requests providing you with reassurance that you receive a personal service and booking experience from start to finish. Booking direct also cuts out the commission rates that are taken by third parties when booked through them, which can be as high as 20%, meaning that all the money you pay can be used by ourselves to improve the service we provide.

Our Responsibility To You

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, bed and breakfast owners have a public health responsibility to ensure their accomodation is clean, not only to the eye, but also that any potential virus is removed to the best of their ability to prevent any disease,

At Victoria Guest House we take this duty of care seriously and as a result have implemented extra procedures to ensure we meet our resposibility to you!

Background to Covid

COVID-19 an be transferred via hands from one surface to another. By touching a surface which has traces of COVID-19, and then touching your face or eyes, you may become infected with COVID-19. Soap and hand sanitiser are effective at denaturing the fats and proteins surrounding the virus, and therefore good ways to kill the virus. For this reason we have place hand sanitisers around the property and in all public areas for your safety.

Latest evidence published in The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine illustrates that information and knowledge is evolving all the time. Currently it is thought that the virus can live on some common household surfaces for:

Air2-3 hours

Paper and Tissue30 minutes - 3 hours

Copper4 hours - 8 hours

Wood, Cloth and Cardboard1 day - 2 days

Glass2 days - 4 days

Plastic and Stainless Steel4days - 7days

This means that all surfaces inthe property which are touched frequently, such as light switches, door handles, kitchen surfaces and bathroom surfaces will be regulalry disinfected.

Good Practice

We’re following all World Health Organisation and UK Government guidelines and have been actively following industry best practice and key tourism bodies and specialists, as they have developed their strategies for us to adopt.

We will continue to update our specific Risk Assessment, which identifies the possible risks and then develops the controls needed to reduce the risks. The result of this Risk Assessment is that we have invested in various types of equipment such as fogging machines, UVC lights for mattresses and soft furnishings and non touch hand sanitisers and implemented a number of procedures into our usual cleaning schedules to reduce the risk of infection and demonstrate to our Guests, that we offer an environment that is safe.

We will continue to complete all necessary assessments and certification to validate our own policies. Please note that the guidance is changing constantly, so the following guidelines will continue to be adjusted as guidance is updated.

Communication

We’ll share as much information as possible to provide assurance and transparency:

Our Post Covid-19 Health and Hygiene policy will be updated and published on our website before we open.

We’ll update all our pre-arrival email communications to provide additional information relating to health and hygiene, making sure that all our guests have received all necessary information to make the most of their stay.

For our residents, we’ve considered the entire customer journey to assess how we can keep you as safe as possible, whilst still giving you the outstanding ‘Highland Hospitality’ experience we’re known for.

Pre Arrival

We politely request that if you are displaying any symptoms of Covid-19 that you call us to postpone your stay. These include; A high temperature, a new and persistent cough and loss of taste and smell. Find out more.

We strongly recommend that you download the government approved track and tracing app, to ensure we are all alerted to any guests who may pose a risk of spreading Covid-19.

We will be in contact the week prior to your arrival and provide you with all the necessary information about your stay, our latest Covid-19 management processes and information about the local area.

If you have booked direct with us and we did not take card details at the time of booking then we will be incontact 7 days prior to arrival, so payment in advance can be arranged, allowing us to maintain contactless payment. For Guests booked through 3rd party sites payment will be taken as normal.

Arrival and Check In

We politely request that if you are displaying any symptoms of Covid-19 that you do not enter the hotel. These include a high temperature, a new and persistent cough and a loss of taste and smell. We will be checking your temperature on arrival and any guests displaying Covid-19 symptoms or a temperature greater than 37.8 degrees C, may be asked to leave the premises and made to return home.

In order to manage potential pinch points, we will ask you to give us your planned arrival time and may ask you to amend it slightly should we already have other guests arriving at the same time.

We have changed our Key Tags, to ensure that we can thoroughly clean and disinfect them between guest stays.

If you have any questions or need assistance during your stay, simply phone us on 01305 785191 from your room.

A hand sanitising station will be provided at our entry/exit, and we request that all customers sanitise upon entering and leaving the building.

All surfaces, door handles and equipment will be regularly cleaned and sanitised throughout the day.

If you have any special requirements please let us know before you arrive so we can make the necessary preparations with everybody’s safety in mind.

Common Areas

We have heightened and enhanced our cleaning procedures to include extensive cleaning of shared surfaces throughout the day.

We have set up hand sanitising stations for you to use and we politely ask you use these when entering/exiting the building.

We have taken our communal customer toilet out of use for the foreseeable future, for the safety of our Guests and Staff. We ask that guests who are staying with us use the bathrooms in their bedrooms.

When walking through the building, we will ask that you please use your discretion and consideration by keeping a social distance of a minimum of 2+ metres between yourself and other guests. We also encourage guests to wear masks on our communal corridors.

Bedrooms and Bathrooms

Our usual high cleaning standards have been enhanced and updated to include a new risk-based approach and all team members will be trained accordingly, prior to re-opening.

Every guest bedroom and en-suite will be fully sanitised before each stay and not accessed afterwards, to ensure no contamination occurs prior to your arrival.

Fabric items such as mattresses, pillows, cushions, carpet, chairs and other furniture are sprayed with an approved sanitising solution, which is effective in killing Covid-19 but otherwise harmless to you and us.

All surfaces are thoroughly wiped down and cleaned prior to your arrival.

Linens, towels and robes are professionally washed at a temperature above 60°C for optimal disinfection . All Toiletries and Consumables are replaced before each stay.

All bathrooms will be provided with Sanitising hand-wash dispensers.

All printed material has been removed from your room to avoid cross contamination.

TV Remote Controls will be covered in individual hygiene bags, which enable easy cleaning and can be changed between guest stays.

Our housekeeping teams undergo strict sanitisation prior to starting work and will wear the appropriate PPE during cleaning, as per the most recent Government guidelines and recommendations at the time of your stay.

Daily servicing by our housekeeping team will only be available upon request, should you require this service, rooms will need to be vacant, windows left opened and personal items including toiletries stowed away. Linen changes for longer stays will still take place, in consultation with you at the time

Breakfast

We have reconfigured our breakfast room and other public spaces to ensure that social distancing can be adhered to.

We will take all necessary measures to deliver minimum contact, ensure hygiene standards and social distancing are maintained, without losing the quality of our breakfast.

Breakfast service will continue to be offered to order. We won’t offer a buffet service with sharing plates or bowls , however, items will still be offered on the menu – with options on portion size and served to your table.

We’ll split breakfast into two time slots so that we can ensure that social distancing is maintained, at our busiest times.

Tables will not be pre-set, but all clean and sanitised utensils, crockery and glassware etc will be served to you upon arrival at your table.

Laminated menus will be printed for each table, which will be cleaned, disinfected and sanitised, when tables are cleared.

Tables and chairs will be sanitized between sittings, and a full deep clean, disinfection and sanitisation will be carried out at the end of each daily service.

At the moment we do not know whether local restaurants will be operating as normal, but will keep our information up to date. If Restaurant bookings are difficult to come by, we will ensure that there is cutlery etc available in the breakfast room for you to sit at a table to eat takeaway.

A Hand sanitising station will be set up at the entry/exit point to use and should be used every time you enter or exit the Breakfast Room.

Check Out

An invoice can be provided and sent to you via email, upon request. If you did not book directly with us, you will need to supply an email address to us, if you require a copy of your bill.

To check out, all you need to do is ring the bell in the hallway and we will come to say goodbye and collect your key/s.

We ask that you use the hand sanitiser before leaving the building.

Our Training, Hygiene and Protection

All of our team have undergone comprehensive hospitality-focused training on how to prevent the contagion of Covid-19. We will continue to elevate our training as best practices evolve.

We will check our own temperatures and that of staff on a daily basis. We are providing PPE and Face masks for team members, and this will be worn in line with the current Government guidelines and recommendations, to keep you and our team safe.

Hand sanitising stations are located at all entry and exit points back of house for the teams to use.

We have attended certificated Covid-19 Training and achieved the Visit England “Good to Go” COVID-19 Industry Standard Award in partnership with Visit Scotland, in recognition that our business has confirmed that we have followed government and industry COVID-19 guidelines, ensuring processes are in place to maintain cleanliness and aid social/physical distancing.

We have also applied for the AA COVID Confident Asessment scheme, which will indicate to customers, that our establishment has in place the necessary risk assessment, stringent safety measures and staff training to reopen safely, in line with the UK's respective government and trade association guidelines, as they are published.

We are dedicated to ensure we keep up to date with any changes to government guidelines, and therefore, subject to the latest guidelines we will be constantly reviewing our processes and precautions. This guide will be constantly updated to give you the very latest information.

Guest Health

It is essential that you do not travel if you are unwell or are demonstrating any Covid symptoms (fever, cough, loss of smell).

Please let us know if you are worried about your symptoms ahead of your stay and we will move your booking to a future date to suit you.

We may check your temperature on arrival, and if you are showing symptoms of a fever, we will ask you to head back home.

If you develop symptoms during your stay, we ask that you immediately head home to self-isolate and seek a test.

We ask you to download and use the track and trace app when it is fully operational.

If you have any further questions on our policies and procedures, please do not hesitate to contact us on 01397 701507

Our property also has an air filtration system that extracts the air around the property and filters it before returing it back into circulation. This will be cleaned on a regular basis ensuring the risk of air borne infection is kept to a minimum