Booking site for quarantine hotels crashes just days before launch
THE Government’s quarantine hotel booking site crashed within minutes of going live yesterday and many travellers reported being unable to reserve any rooms for the first two nights.
With less than four days to go before the scheme is launched on Monday, the booking site was shut down by technical glitches for most of yesterday, denying thousands of potential passengers access. Even before the system suffered the failure, due to the amount of traffic, people using it to book their rooms were unable to make a reservation for Feb 15 or 16, the first two days of the scheme.
Sources suggested it had gone live without all the participating hotels having yet been uploaded onto it.
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, announced on Tuesday that the Government had agreed deals with 16 hotels for just under 5,000 rooms.
But leaked documents showed they needed a capacity of up to 28,000 hotel rooms for 1,425 arrivals a day, each needing 10 days of quarantine.
Anyone who arrives in the UK without having booked their £1,750 package – which includes hotel, food, transport and two Covid tests – faces a £4,000 fine, according to Government guidance published yesterday.
It also stated that Britons returning from abroad will only be allowed into the UK via five airports – Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Birmingham and Farnborough, forcing anyone living in the North of England or Midlands to quarantine hundreds of miles from home.
Any passenger who arrives at a different port of entry from the 33 red list countries faces a £10,000 fine and the cost of the transport to one of the designated airports.
The hotel quarantine is required by law for any Briton or UK resident returning from the red list countries with the Brazilian or South African variants.
All foreign citizens travelling from those countries are banned from UK entry.
People on benefits can apply for a deferred repayment of the bill, which is reduced to £3,050 for a family of three adults, £2,725 for two adults and a child, and £2,400 for an adult and two children.
Those quarantining in the hotels will be confined to their rooms for 11 nights.
The hotels will be patrolled by security guards and people will only be allowed out for exercise with special permission from hotel staff or security, although this is not guaranteed.
The Department for Health and Social Care said rooms were available and travellers would be able to book “imminently” once technical glitches were fixed.