Now that the Anguilla Government has undertaken to implement a soft reopening of the island’s tourism industry, starting with villas, the process is moving to hotels. It is a cautious step to reopen the economy – and the hospitality job market – while avoiding the spread of the coronavirus.
Leading the process is the Honourable Parliamentary Secretary, for Economic Development, Mrs. Quincia Gumbs-Marie, who has been assigned by the Executive Council to take charge of the reopening arrangements. She is working with a broad team of Government, health officials and others. On Tuesday, September 8, she held discussions with members of her inner circle – Ms. Gina Brooks, Tourism Planner; and Ms. Andia Ravariere, Product Development and Research Officer in the Ministry of Tourism.
The Anguillian newspaper walked in on that meeting and spoke to the Parliamentary Secretary. She was asked how far the reopening process had reached.
“We have the costs for visitors associated with the soft opening, and we are continuing the approval process for villas and ensuring that all of them have a Safe Environment Certificate,” she replied. “We are also in the process of doing our protocols for phase two and bringing on bigger properties, like our major hotels, in the hope of having some sort of festive season. We have abandoned the idea of doing an industry-wide protocol. But we are doing specific protocols because the layout of the properties would have different requirements. For the past week, and into next week, we will be carrying out site visits, along with the Chief Medical Officer, to approve the different properties for their reopening in phase two.”
The rest of the dialogue between the Parliamentary Secretary and The Anguillian newspaper continued and follows:
We are talking about the provision of rooms for our visitors, but what about such ancillary services as food, recreation etc?
In terms of property services, we will have something like a vacation bubble. Visitors will still have to practice social distancing. Most of the protocols of the properties will require them to have masks, and they can have certain services although limited contact will be preferred. Open air dining is what is happening in phase one – primarily for guests on property and not to the general public. We have quite a few exciting developments from different properties. For example, one property in particular is going through contactless service so guests can sign in and order food from their phone – thus limiting guests contact. The majority of the properties are giving services but limiting contact.
The tourism sector is part of the high-touch economy requiring persons to be hands-on but, because of Covid, it requires the tourism industry to take on the characteristics of the low-touch economy. This is with the introduction of lots of technology as well as promoting social distancing where applicable. Once properties have an open-air restaurant, and the beaches are accessible, they are encouraged to have their guests utilise those services. However, there will be persons on staff who will be ensuring that guests do not venture on to different parts of the island – and are adhering to the necessary protocols from the Ministry of Health.
Specifically, what about the need for staff at the properties to serve food to guests, engaging in house-keeping and other areas of work?
All the properties have shown us that their staff will be covered by PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). Housekeepers will be entering to clean the rooms with PPE – face masks, gloves and body gowns. Most of them will have a high grade anti-bacterial spray for the rooms upon entry and leaving. In terms of the provision of services – for example bar and restaurant services – there will be no buffet options so that guests won’t have to interact with each other, and there will be limited service. In certain properties, they will be setting the tables, laying out the food and then inviting the guests to the tables – or there will only be one contact. So there won’t be space for the guests as much as it used to be like before.
The services will be limited and persons will have the option to order extra requirements on their phones. For example, if they need more napkins, someone will drop them off and leave so the contact is limited. This is an open-air space and not an air-conditioned room. Most of the options we have seen so far, at the properties, are beach or balcony services. This means that the threat of someone sneezing into a room, and the virus being circulated, is much lower because in the open-air there will be a free flow of air where our employees won’t interact with guests as much.
What are the arrangements for visitors to travel to Anguilla?
They will take the usual routes. As you can imagine, the air traffic routes to Anguilla are limited at this point; but then we have our Trans-Anguilla and Air Anguilla services up and running so they are doing most of the transfers from Antigua, St. Kitts and St. Maarten.
In another phase we will start to bring on the ferry services to be incorporated into the travel arrangements. We will also have Safe Environment Certificates for taxi operators who will be moving persons from the different ports to the locations where they will be isolated. It is similar to repatriation where everybody will be coming to one location and will also be isolated. So there will not be a mixing of guests who will still have access to our beaches and restaurants on property so long as they are still in quarantine space.
The Anguilla Taxi Association expressed concern that it appears, with the opening of villas, taxi-drivers may not be totally involved in transporting visitors. The understanding of the Association is that special agents have been appointed to organise the travel to Anguilla of visitors – and to handle their on-island transportation. What really is the situation?
That is really not the case. Villas usually manage the travel and arrival of their guests. So villas may already have contracts with other ground transportation companies – an arrangement in which the Government cannot get involved. But we understand the need for our taxis being included in this process. We are now trying to begin the process of certifying our taxi-drivers so that they can also be part of phase two [the major hotels]. It is not any great plan or plot. It is just the matter in which most villas operate. They won’t usually have their guests come to Anguilla and then say they need to get to this villa. They will usually have someone at the port. How it ordinarily goes, it would be possible where different persons with contracts with villas will be given preference – but that is not the intention of phase one, and that is not something in which the Government can get directly involved.
What would you say are some of the safety protocols for taxi-drivers providing transportation services for visitors and then returning home to their families?
That will be handled on Friday [September 12], but the general consensus is that they will practice the usual social distancing; encourage persons to be masked; wash hands; and the utilisation of hand sanitisers. It would just be increased hygienic practices. However, the full protocol will be discussed with the Taxi Association’s representatives on Friday.
We are ensuring that there are Government-facilitated training sessions for taxi-drivers and hotel workers. We are trying to empower our people to know in what ways they can contract or carry the coronavirus. When we look at the protocols for hotels, we are ensuring that whatever interactions there are, between employees and guests, the chances of the virus being transferred are limited. The only way we can do that is by empowering persons with knowledge – so we are teaching them how to operate during Covid; and that’s the same kind of training we will give taxi-drivers so they don’t have to worry about the risks of transporting visitors.
However, there is never a zero miss possibility – but we are trying to empower all our service providers to operate during this time. Although we have had persons operating taxis, and hired by the Government for repatriation, we have had zero cases so far; but they had to maintain a certain standard to ensure that if we have a case they [the taxi-drivers] are protected.
The Anguilla Pier in St. Maarten is one of the routes through which visitors usually travel to Anguilla. Are there any plans to visit that pier for a physical inspection – and discussions with appropriate persons?
We will be doing that at some point in the future, and that trip will be guided by our Chief Medical Officer to ensure that there is no interaction with any person on the pier. It will just be with the representatives there – and we will see how we can encourage social distancing and other safe environment protocols that already have established at our ports in Anguilla. That port in St. Maarten is only an extension of the Anguilla ports, and we will ensure that it is up to the same standards that we have.
The Anguillian newspaper was informed by Governor Foy that the UK Government had approved a further 450,000 US dollars for border security in Anguilla. How do you see this factoring in the continuing plans to safeguard Anguilla?
Safeguarding Anguilla has always been our key priority. All our efforts have been staked in risk mitigation as well as control. Part of that is ensuring that we don’t have any imported risks that we cannot track if someone were to sneak into Anguilla and we don’t know the person.
When we look across the world and see that borders are not controlled, this increases the risk for local transmission. So we are excited that the UK Government has again stepped in to uphold their constitutional responsibility to secure our borders. We know that will assist in ensuring that we operate in a safer environment.
Finally, as Parliamentary Secretary, charged with overseeing the reopening of the tourism industry in Anguilla, this is regarded as a tremendous responsibility. Who are some of the other persons working with you in this regard, and what reassurance can you give to the people of Anguilla that all will go well?
The reassurance is that all of us are working in the interest of Anguilla. We know that safety is the key priority; and the priority. Second to that is to ensure that we have an economy that people can live and work in. As we try to understand life during Covid, we are moving forward cautiously and following all the directives by the Permanent Secretary of Health, the Chief Medical Officer, Public Health UK; CARPHA (Caribbean Public Health Agency); WHO (World Health Organisation) – and ensuring that everything we are doing is steeped in epidemiological best practices and prioritises the health of the people of Anguilla.
This is not an individual task. In fact, you walked in on us having a meeting for planning further efforts to reopen the economy. We have the Anguilla Tourism Board; Ministry of Tourism; Ministry of Health; the Governor’s Office; support from Public Heath UK; Customs, Immigration. Labour; and AASPA (Anguilla Air and Sea Ports Authority). So there are a lot of persons involved in this and my job, and by extension the Ministry of Tourism, is to ensure that all of these hands are working together – and we are doing all that is in the best interest of the people who rely on us to reopen Anguilla.
