It would be an understatement to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has not been a challenge to many businesses. The short term rental market could have been in crisis mode with all the cancellations but some have recovered by providing longer term rentals to help out those people who are either self isolating or unable to return to their place of residence.
Host Your Home Sunshine Coast saw this as an opportunity to be adaptive, resilient and innovative. Albeit a bit quieter than normal, Host Your Home (HYH) continues to accept bookings and help out stranded travellers and workers. Our main concern has been, and continues to be, the safety of our guests and staff.
The Australian governments continue to do everything in their power in managing the response to the health threats from COVID-19 and have provided clear recommendations and health advice for safe practice in the accommodation industry. Through pre-screening guests, combined with information collected and provided by short term rental platforms, risk management has been our focus.
On the ground, enhanced cleaning practices is of the utmost importance and providing adequate time and resources to do so is imperative. Along with normal cleaning practices, our professional cleaners disinfect frequently touched surfaces such as door handles, light switches, all bench and table tops and remote controls. The new normal is to ensure all hard surfaces are cleaned with appropriate cleaning agents and at the same time, protecting the health of our cleaners.
Airbnb and Homeaway have provided cleaning checklists which are useful for sharing with cleaners along with information on government recommendations. We continue to monitor these and inform our cleaners of the latest updates. We are all in this together and together, we can support each other to get through this pandemic and come out the other side ready to contribute to the economy of our communities.
