Swiss luxury hotel chain offers special quarantine package

Le Bijou, a luxury hotel chain in Switzerland, is offering a quarantine package to its guests that includes in-room corona virus testing, doctor visits and 24-hour nursing care.

Le Bijou is a part hotel, part serviced apartments company, and operates its luxury accommodation across Switzerland in cities including Zurich, Geneva and Basel. Switzerland, which shares a border with Northern Italy, was impacted early.

Before the outbreak of COVID-19, Le Bijou already catered for a very exclusive clientele, playing host to the likes of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Jordan Belfort and even the Saudi Royal Family, charging between £700 to £1,700 per night.

But even the most luxurious hotels have not been immune to the plummeting demand, which has led to the co-founder and CEO of the hotel chain to get creative.

After the disease reached Europe, traditional reservations ceased, but the hotel was getting new requests from people who wanted a luxury place to stay away from the outbreak, avoid hospitals, while still cook their own food and have access to doctors and nursing care.

To meet this new demand, Le Bijou began advertising quarantine-friendly perks to attract guests, including contact-less check-in (to avoid contact between strangers) and medical services in guest’s rooms provided by Double Check, a Swizz private medical clinic.

This five star service does not come cheap, and different packages are available. Coron avirus testing can be bought for around £400. A twice-daily check in from a nurse is £1,500 while the 24/7 nurse service costs £4,000.

The accommodation provides daily food deliveries and personal chef services, but to meet government regulations the management have cut the daily cleaning service to just sanitising the rooms between guests.