Our restaurant may open again!

On the 1st of June 2020 our restaurant will open again. At twelve o’clock you can come and enjoy your stay with us again. However, there are a few conditions. For example, we may receive a maximum of 30 guests in our restaurants and we can only welcome people with a reservation made in advance. Before we receive our guests we have a check moment, this means that we will ask you if you have any complaints such as; coughing, nasal colds, fever (from 38 degrees) or shortness of breath.

How do we adhere to the guidelines? With our social distance (one and a half meter) society it is, of course, very important that we can guarantee one and a half meters between the guests and our employees. All work protocols have been revised, but we have also thought about the layout of the restaurants and the hotel in order to fully comply with all the necessary precautions, so that guests and employees can stay 1.5 meters apart from each other. This new situation calls for necessary adjustments and revised procedures in the hotel and the restaurants, but also for the flexibility of the employees to work differently. In this way, the safety and health of both employees and guests is maximally guaranteed.

We have taken the following main measures:

1.To serve our dishes, our employees use room service trolleys or tables where the employees put the dishes on. This makes it possible to keep the 1.5 meter distance between staff and guests.

2. Our kitchen and service staff wear gloves.

3. Our tables are at least one and a half meters apart. In addition, we have chosen not to let guests sit directly behind each other. For this we have reduced our total number of seats in order to guarantee safety.

Hygiene label Mercure Hotel Tilburg Centrum is a franchise hotel of the international hotel chain Accor Hotels. To support the return of the hospitality industry, Accor Hotels joined forces with Bureau Veritas, world leader in testing, inspection and certification. Together they developed a label that proves that the right safety standards and cleaning protocols have been achieved, allowing companies to reopen.

Concretely, the output of this effort will be an operational guide made available to all stakeholders in the hospitality industry, allowing them to rigorously apply the health and safety recommendations of authorities (WHO, Ministry of Health, etc.), both in guest areas and at the back of office and hospitality areas. Before booking a stay, guests can check on a special Bureau Veritas website whether the hotel or restaurant has been certified by Bureau Veritas, and thus whether the measures have been duly taken into account.

Read more about the hygiene label here.

What further measures do we take? We introduce measures aimed at minimizing the risk of contamination. We communicate these measures to both our employees and our guests. These measures apply to all viruses that can cause flu and colds.

These are our measures:

1. Wash your hands regularly – at least every 30 minutes in case of contact with food and guests and at least every 3 hours in case of office functions;

2. Cough and sneeze on the inside of your elbow;

3. Use paper handkerchiefs and throw them away immediately after use;

4. Know why we don’t wear a mouth cap (see point A).

To go further:

• We pay extra attention to (our) hygiene;
• Rooms: we pay extra attention to all touch points in the rooms and around the rooms (corridors). This means that we are going to clean the remote control, all door handles, all handrails of cabinets and minibar, light buttons, and other objects that guests touch a lot extra thoroughly;
• Public areas: extra rounds will be made by our morning and evening team to extra clean the banisters in the stairwell, as well as the handles in the toilets. This will be done several times a day. We will also clean the railings of the stairs in between;
• We’ll make sure the soap dispenser is always filled on the toilet;
• There are always clean (paper) towels available for guests and staff;
• Disinfecting soap is available for guests and staff at different locations so that they can also disinfect their hands in the meantime;
• The following text has been added to the registration form, which guests fill in during check-in. Should the following apply, the receptionist(s) will contact the director. Because of Corona covid-19 we would like to know if we have guests in house that have been in close contact with a confirmed case of coronavirus in the last 14 days. If you have in please tell our staff so we can discuss with you how to handle in the best interest of our other guests, staffmembers and yourself.
• Our employees should also tell management when they’ve been in a high-risk area or are experiencing complaints. We will then take measures for this;
• An infrared thermometer is available at the reception so that guests and employees can measure their temperature (when in doubt). If someone has a fever of 38 degrees or more, the available management member will be contacted;
• At the reception there are stripes on the floor so that a distance of 1.5 meters can be observed;
• At the entrance of our hotel, Grand Café Puur and Restaurant Taste! we will install disinfection columns, so everyone will have the opportunity to disinfect their hands;
• In our restaurants all tables are more than 1,5 meter apart, so guests can keep this distance from each other.
• We ask our guests to pay as much as possible without contact. If a guest does come into contact with the terminal, we will disinfect the terminal after every contact.
• Guests who pay in cash are asked to put the money in the appropriate dish. After contact with the money, our staff will have to clean their hands.
• Upon arrival, we ask our guests to clean their hands at the designated areas.
• At the reception you are expected to keep a distance of 1.5 meters by standing at the first line.
• At the reception we will also place screens between staff and guest.
• The lift can only be used by one person or persons from the same room. On the outside of each elevator there is a form to draw the attention of guests and staff.
• Room service is preferred. When taken to rooms, it must be placed on a tray on a trolley and the guest takes the tray off the trolley. As soon as room service is handed over to a guest, the time at which the tray can be collected will be arranged; if the guest is unable to indicate this, the guest can call reception at ‘9’ as soon as it can be collected. As soon as a pick up time has been agreed, the guest must place the plateau outside his room.

(A) Does it make sense to wear a mouth cap? “In the Netherlands, we only recommend mouth masks for medical staff. People who work with (potentially) infected people use professional mouth masks. These mouth caps only help if you use them correctly; they have to close very well over the nose and mouth, and you have to change them regularly. The simple (paper) mouth caps that many people use in China, for example, do not protect the carrier against the virus. You have to use the masks very carefully and change them regularly. That is hardly possible in daily use”, says the RIVM.

(B) Can the virus also spread by air? By coughing and sneezing the virus comes out of your nose, throat and/or lungs. The virus enters the air through small droplets. These droplets do not float in the air but descend quickly. The sicker a person is, the more virus he/she can spread. There is no evidence yet that the virus can remain in the air for a longer period of time and spread in this way.

(C) Can the new coronavirus also spread through food?

This coronavirus has most likely spread from an exotic animal in China to humans. Many different animal species are brought together alive at markets. The conditions in these markets make it easier for viruses to pass from one animal species to another, and also from animal to human. As a result of human-to-human infection, the virus has then spread further. Whether the animals still play a role in the transmission in China is still under investigation, as the source has not been found. We assume that there can be no spread from animal to human in the Netherlands, not even through the food eaten here. Coronaviruses need an animal or human to ‘stay alive’ and grow. That is not possible in food.