Best Western has announced that it could open its hotels as quarantine facilities within two days.
Chief executive Rob Paterson said: “We could turn this around within 24 to 48 hours for an open hotel, and a bit longer for an unopened hotel.”
Mr Paterson told BBC Breakfast: “Through our project with the NHS supporting discharge patients, we’ve got the protocols and the whole infection control management side of things taken care of.”
He added that it would be an “entirely contactless and quite a sterile experience” for guests.
The news comes as the Government is set to announce that some incoming passengers will be subject to Australia- and New Zealand-style quarantine arrangements. The Cabinet coronavirus operations committee will meet today to finalise plans that will cost passengers up to £1,500 for 10 days self-isolating, with meals served in their rooms and supervised by private security guards.
The airline industry has sounded the alarm over the plans to introduce quarantine hotels. In a joint statement, Karen Dee, chief executive of the Airport Operators Association and Tim Alderslade, chief executive of Airlines UK, said that Britain already had “some of the highest levels of restrictions in the world” and that the “impact of further measures would be catastrophic.”
Meanwhile, new data from YouGov suggests that the public is overwhelmingly supportive of introducing a temporary hotel quarantine system, with 87 per cent of those polled saying they agreed with the measure.