New anti-Covid-19 Gold Standard kitemark for Best Western Hotels

01 June 2020

Best Western Great Britain has partnered with Quality in Tourism (QT) to adopt a new gold standard for anti-Covid-19 cleanliness and safety across all its 297 hotels which they claim will make them the safest hotels in Great Britain.

The new kitemark for safety and cleanliness will see Best Western hotels overlay new standards on top of the brand?s already stringent cleaning requirements and processes.

It means Best Western hotels will be independently audited by QT trained assessors to enable them to be able to display a new kitemark or accreditation.

Rob Paterson, chief executive of Best Western Great Britain, said: ?We believe we have taken the ultimate step for the safety of our staff and guests. The new kitemark provides reassurance to the public that we have the highest standards of safety in our hotels for anti-Covid cleanliness in the whole of hospitality, because it is independently audited and signed off. Not marked by Best Western. That was important to us.

?We believe this scheme could also help get Britain open for business sooner. We want to work with Government and QT to help roll this out more widely to other businesses - using us as test cases if needs be - so we can get the economy started quickly and safely and with the confidence of the consumer.?

Deborah Heather, founder of M-Assessments which manages the QT scheme, said: The kitemark will be a guarantee to the public that Best Western hotels are the safest in Great Britain and its fantastic to be partnering with them to roll this out. The QT Safe, Clean and Legal kitemark will be the gold standard for hotels fighting back against Covid-19 and we are in the process of rolling this out as a solution in Europe and the US to provide an internationally recognised kitemark of confidence that consumers can trust on their travels.

?Like Best Western, we want to help Britain reopen as quickly and safely as possible once the restrictions start to lift, giving consumers a level of security and trust that those businesses displaying our kitemark are going above and beyond for the safety of their employees and the safety of the public. This doesn?t have to be exclusive to hotels or hospitality, the processes and procedures needed to gain the kitemark could easily be adapted and adopted by other industries and we are happy to have those conversations if it helps Britain start trading quickly and safely again after lockdown.?

Best Western will begin the roll out of the scheme this week and hopes to have all 297 hotels accredited by the start of July, ready to open if the lockdown restrictions allow. The scheme involves comprehensive risk assessments of every area of the property and the adoption of new anti-Covid-19 approaches and procedures in every guest and public area to Environmental Health approved protocols, followed up by independently audited assessments so that Best Western is not in control of passing its own properties.