I am pleased to advise that we have officially been given the go ahead to launch this project. As such we will overnight be creating specific pages titled 'Key Worker accommodation providers in Somerset’. We will start marketing these pages as of tomorrow.
Therefore if you are an accommodation provider can you please let us know if you would like to be included within these pages. If you are working with Visit Somerset as a membership group we would also be delighted to advertise individual accommodation providers within the membership, as part of the project for an initial 3 month period.
This is a fast pace moving environment and whilst we have started planning for Post Covid 19 we are fully aware of the pressures that a lot of your businesses are financially facing now and want to find every way to support you where possible.
This is the official guidance from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport
What we would ask is if you can include a disclaimer along the lines of: "if you work in a field related to the government or its public bodies - such as NHS staff - please use your organisation's accommodation booking process in the first instance". We're just keen to make sure that government commercial/procurement processes are used wherever possible for ease of logging, accounting, etc.
Health and Safety advice can be found here.
Government advice for accommodation providers can be found at
this link, which outlines the circumstances in which they can remain open, including for
key workers
Finally one of board members Chris Heayns from Mill Meadow in Taunton will be writing up some case note guidance, as he has had some experience relating to this recent development, supporting pricing structure and HSE guidance. He will be issuing these details for me tomorrow which I will get over to you.
Please come back if you have any questions.
John Turner
CEO Visit Somerset
john@visitsomerset.co.uk