To think self-catering places should ditch these Covid era things?

[Rainallnight]

We are staying in a (pricey) self catering cottage for half term.

we are required to strip our beds and put the linen into laundry bags before leaving. I don’t want to do this. I’m on holiday.

And check in wasn’t until 5pm for ‘extra cleaning’.

Two plus years of Covid have taught us hat it’s an airborne virus so opening the windows is the best thing you can do.

These other measures are unnecessary and are now there for the letting companies’ convenience rather than infection control.

It is driving me mad. AIBU?

I booked a scale & polish with my dentist the other day. Or at least I thought I had; the girl on the phone got it wrong, as it turns out the dentist isn't currently doing these and only the dental hygienist is.

The cynic in me thinks that this is highly convenient, when a scale and polish with an NHS dentist costs £12.50, and a hygienist appointment costs £70.

Was this some sort of self catering dentistry? Otherwise, I think you are on the wrong thread.

Sorry, that sounded really random! My point was that the dentist isn't offering those in response to Covid

Stripping beds saves the cleaners very little time and it is far easier to see if any are badly stained or damaged whilst still on the bed.

The late check in is nonsense, cleaning for covid takes no extra time. We have just changed the products we use.

Just leave the beds, Airbnb will only charge you for damage. In my experience they are very much on the customers side.

The "covid era" is not over. And now we also have Monkey Pox circulating, which is transferred on linens, etc.

5pm is NOT a normal time.

Pre-pandemic, 3pm was the norm, sometimes even 2pm. I thought the self-catering I was in recently was pushing it with 4pm. I'm not sure I would entertain a place that said 5pm at all.

Please try to enjoy your expensive holiday and think yourself lucky.

^

I am SO sick of hearing this.

Race to the bottom or what?

I agree pre covid check in was usually 2/3pm and the laundry think is new too. I think businesses like it and are busier with everyone making up for their lost holidays.

The honest truth is that NO ONE working in the Service/Hospitality/Travel industry wants things to go back to how they were pre Covid/Brexit.

The service/hospitality/travel industries are so short staffed and desperate to retain those that they do have at the moment. So If companies try to revert back to pre covid policies then the staff will within a couple of hours looking get offered a position somewhere else that treats them better.

Just have a look on indeed for how many Cleaner/Waitress/Retail/Hotel vacancies there are in any tourist town/City right now.......

5pm check out is late in my experience of holidaying over the years. Norm would be between 2-4pm, with most common check in at 3pm. Then check out around 11am. I'd find 5pm very late for check in, hopefully you can at least store your luggage somewhere beforehand. Not everyone arrives at holiday accommodation by car.

And who wants to strip beds on holiday? I've never been asked to and wouldn't do it automatically.

Not being able to leave my luggage somewhere before 5 would be a dealbreaker as we would arrive by train and taxi not private car.

YANBU
The check in time is very late and they shouldn't need an extra 2 hours for cleaning, they should have been cleaning it to a suitable standard before! What extra could they possibly need to do that tasks 2 hours?

I do think stripping the beds was a thing pre covid, at least in some accommodation. This doesn't bother me that much and it only takes 5 minutes. I can't imagine it saves them that much time anyway.

The "covid era" is over in an everyday sense - no social distancing, masks, additional cleaning in restaurants etc. You know that, you know what they mean.
And monkeyppx has fewer than 200 cases in the whole country so I doubt any letting agency has special measures just for that

YANBU

OP says a self-catering cottage not a hotel - so for those saying cleaner shortages as a reason, I think that is bollocks. They aren't cleaning 100 hotel rooms in one day it's one cottage! The amount of posts I am seeing from cleaners advertising their services on apps like "Next door" is ridiculous there are loads of them! I've never seen so many cleaners before! So please don't say it is Brexit, it might be costs but definitely not a shortage of supply. I also work in an industry where we require cleaners regularly and haven't encountered any shortages.

With regards to check-in and out times I have also noticed this. Places like center parcs and other chain hotels still have a later check-in time than pre-covid and I can guarantee their cleaning service is not any more stringent now than it was pre-covid. I'm also not sure what additional cleaning measures have been introduced that shouldn't have been implemented prior to covid anyway, surely the extensive cleaning should have always been adopted for hygiene reasons?

I stayed in a hotel recently that only serviced the rooms every three days for 'my covid convenience'. Rubbish. It's about saving money and effort on their part and let's not pretend otherwise.

Yes I've had similar. Same price, no daily cleaning. It is to do with money, not covid.

Isn’t this the case for every single organisation now? They have adopted measures to tackle Covid and found that they saved them time and money so carried on.
Doctors - no face to face appointments and you can’t get through on the phone.
Bank - reduced hours and then shut branch as no one using it. Again phone lines difficult.
Council - can’t visit re council tax query, no one answering phones and ignoring emails.

Ditto passport office, DVLA.
Sure everyone has lots of other examples.
Its always about the money.

Agree, it's money, but just using covid as an excuse.

Oh no, you've prompted me to check on our week in Devon and sure enough, 4pm check-in and we have to strip all the beds and put all the towels etc into different coloured bags,

I don't get the 4pm check-in thing. It means we will be sitting around all morning waiting to leave. What a waste of a day.

It's a risky strategy on the brink of a recession though. People will gravitate to good service and good value with the money they do chose to spend. I don't think superfluous covid rules will feature heavily for long.

@eurochick yes it is money. But do remember how much money they lost during covid so a lot will need to do this to survive. Personally I understand this as have experienced it from their side (similar industry) and need to find ways to make money back that I lost, which includes pulling back some parts of the service. Or I'll go bust as still in negative £££ from the whole shit show

Pre-covid, my agency set 3 pm check-in, 10 am check-out. It is currently 4 pm check-in, 9 am check-out (at one point it was 5 pm check in!). I don't think the agency have any plans to change it back, as you say, it's one of those things that has no justification now covid is under control/we know more about how it is spread, but makes owner's/cleaner's a bit lives easier (can't see how it saves us money though).

I text the majority of my guests the week before to let them know that the cottage will be available at the earlier time of 2 pm, and have a note in my guest book that check-out is actually 10 am. So it's well worth anyone facing this contacting the agency/owner and very politely (with no whiff of entitlement/annoyance) asking if an earlier check-in/later check-out is at all possible.

Yes that's bonkers at this point. The last self catering cottage we stayed in, in Scotland last month, had scrapped all of that nonsense thankfully.

With a private rental, you have no idea if the person renting it out is in a vulnerable category. Things may have moved on for you but not everyone is lucky enough to have good health. I have put UABU because you could easily have checked in advance and booked somewhere that would strip your bed for you if you wanted.

Back in the day, if you went self catering, people had to tidy the place to a reasonable standard before they left. I can remember my parents running around hoovering etc

I just cancelled a booking because check-in was 4pm. (The one I switched to offers 2pm check-in.) 5pm is ridiculous. YANBU.