What the quarantine hotel experience promises for returning travellers

Ottawa has made public a list of criteria for hotels to qualify as quarantine sites for travellers who return to Canada and have to isolate while awaiting COVID-19 test results. This mandatory three-night stay, at the travellers’ expense (estimated at $2,000), is in accordance with the new restrictions on travel announced by the federal government last week.

Hotels must be located within 10 kilometres of one of the four airports in the country that are currently accepting international flights: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal.

Along with basic accommodations, the hotel must provide a safe shuttle from the airport, contactless meal delivery, phone service, free wireless internet, hand sanitizer and the deep cleaning of all high surfaces twice a day.

The hotels must have systems in place to keep returning travellers in quarantine separate from other guests, and to allow those in isolation to have brief outdoor breaks.

The hotels are also responsible for reporting traveller check-in and check-out times to authorities, and must be able to enforce safety protocols such as monitoring guests’ movement within the hotel. 

Fines for refusing the hotel quarantine stay, and breaking the federal Quarantine Act, could run as high as $750,000 and/or six months in jail.

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