I think washing cereal boxes is taking it too far.
We leave our non frozen purchases in our cool sous-sol for at least twenty four hours before bringing them into the house.
Yes, that’s what we’re doing too generally.
There’s a comment on one of the newspaper sites that live virus was found on a surface on a cruise ship 17 days after the ship was vacated.
I use a J-cloth and a bar of ordinary soap. The cloth is barely wet and I cover it in soap. It then is used to wipe over every single packet, can, bottle, car keys, wallet, credit card, bag that comes into the house. And nothing is rinsed. The soap stays as a film on the item. I understand that it’s the soap that breaks down the virus exterior.
Going back to gite cleaning. I’ve said it elsewhere, but worth saying again. I will ask my guests to leave nothing in the cottage when they go. I don’t want to be dealing with half empty packets of cereals, bottles of shampoo, etc! I will provide a welcome pack but it will only be packaged / bottled/canned stuff that I can clean. If they want fresh bread etc they will have to buy it themselves.
And we have just received another provisional protocol for cleaning and managing gites and chambre d’hôtes
If you need more time to clean, how about offering a 6 day rental instead of 7 if you explained to potential customers the reason is to ensure everywhere is clean I think they might appreciate it.
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Thanks Jane.
We will give people the option if they so wish - but there is so little reliable evidence of exactly how long the virus can live on different surfaces, that nothing gives a 100% guarantee.
So, it looks like the borders will be opened from tomorrow so we can expect guests. For the Gite owners on this site, will you be following the deep clean guidelines or just take a chance all will be well? Must admit, we are more bothered about the English coming down here, and maybe the Parisians, than anyone else.
We want to follow guidelines but some of the owners don’t want us to because of potential loss of income. Plus we want to protect ourselves and household.
We have an enhanced cleaning programme agreed with all our rental clients both for the guests safety and our own, one of our key concerns is contact with guests who are coming from all over Europe so we have made it clear that we will not enter the property whilst it is occupied unless it is absolutely essential. A couple of clients have whinged about the extra cost but ultimately I think they realise that there is no choice.
My cottage sleeps six so I have changed it to 4. Guests leave at 10 am so that day and the whole of the next day I’m leaving it empty with doors and windows open for the 2 days before anyone else arrives. I spend all day cleaning it already how clean can it be ! I will use lots of disinfectant and change the pillow and duvets between guests. I will not be shaking hands or kissing cheeks .
I had 5 enquiries today from French people and not one mentioned covid or cleaning.
We are following the guideline that we cannot enter a property for three hours after a guest leaves so we are enforcing the 10am checkout and will delay check in on some of the larger houses past the normal 4pm. Agree about entering whilst they are there.
We are following as much of the guidelines as we can, but are not leaving gaps between clients as the majority of them booked way before this crisis so they have a contract for their dates.
So have steam cleaner, and will also change everything in between clients. Since we are eco it is hard to use disposable everything as recommended, so have piles of chopped up old T shirts to use for all cleaning, and that we can wash, and have found non-bleach disinfectant.
We never have british clients, most are french or german so we’re happy to have them. And several are returning clients too, which makes it easier as we trust them.
But we never kiss clients, but won’t be shaking their hands either this year. Mind you I am not going to greet them in a mask, but will stand well back. They will all have had a livret d’accueil numerique anyway.
Hi Anne,
We have sort of decided our compromise will be to let people in the same day people leave. Ideally we would do a 48 hour gap but the owners won’t be having that. If our owners don’t care, and all but one owner seems to be of that opinion, we will do what protects us and if any guests questions us on extra cleaning we will refer them to the owner.
Hi Jane, luckily most of the new bookings are from the French for obvious reasons, Most of the pre-booked UK holidays have cancelled but expect some to be booked soon. Any meets and greets we do will definitely be done overly socially distanced!