New Social Distancing Policies & Procedures in place
The Kingsley may have closed its doors to guests for the time being but the Cork hotel is playing host to frontline healthcare staff. The hotel has also recently hosted essential training to frontline workers, which has allowed hotel management and staff to develop new procedures and policies to safely host meetings and events with social distancing firmly at the forefront during the current pandemic and beyond.
The largest conference venue (the Deane-Woodward Suite) has capacity for up to 250 people seated in rows. Now with 2-metre social distancing in place, the capacity of the function room is now 30 people.
It is considered that at this distance, together with a limited period of time that any meeting can run we are confident that every effort has been made to ensure a safe environment for our guests and staff. Some of the new protocols we will have in place are as follows:
- Attendees to be notified in advance that the arrival time is strictly 10 minutes before the meeting.
- Clear direction on how to locate the meeting space shared in advance, and signage in place to ensure direction is obvious.
- Automatic doors, or doors propped open (to reduce touch points) 15 minutes before the meeting.
- Hand sanitising stations on arrival, and in the meeting space.
- Signage along the route to convey; practice safe distancing, good hand hygiene as per most up to date WHO and HSE guidelines.
- WHO information about hand hygiene to be displayed beside each hand sanitiser station, and beside each sink in the restrooms.
- 2 meter Social Distancing to be maintained at all times. Furniture layout should reflect this.
- Floors to be taped, to mark out the 2 meter distance along the path from the entrance.
- Registration desk to have no touch points, attendees should show ID on arrival and this is to be documented.
- Bins provided that can be closed.
- 2 meters back from the registration desk, a box marked out for the attendee to stand within.
- Floors markers to run from this point, out to the entrance.
- Hand sanitiser placed on the registration desk.
- Staff on registration desk to allocate seating at registration, front row to be filled first and so on.
- If pens and paper are being used, attendees are encouraged to take this with them on departure.
- Air conditioning to be set to ambient temperature to ensure good ventilation.
- Paper towel to be available in toilets for hand drying.
- Company to advise the hotel when the event is over, room to be left for 1 hour after the room has been vacated before cleaning can commence.
- A minimum of 2 hours must elapse between sessions to allow for cleaning the room. All surfaced deep cleaned.
- Air sanitiser to be used in the room after the event before staff start cleaning.
- Ensure the proper cleaning of all surfaces and meeting equipment after each booking.
With all these new policies, procedures and conference room layouts in place, we are confident that future conferences and meetings at The Kingsley will room smoothly, safely and in comfort for both guests and staff alike.
