United legends offer their hotels to house NHS workers for free
UNITED legends Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs have announced they are temporarily closing their two Manchester hotels – and offering their rooms to the NHS for free.
Their GG Hospitality group is shutting Hotel Football at Old Trafford and the recently-opened Stock Exchange Hotel in the city centre from Sunday in response to the escalating coronavirus crisis.
They have vowed not to make any staff redundant or put anyone on unpaid leave during the closure.
They said in a statement: “The company is working with its team to put a package in place for all staff members for the months ahead, following which the hope is that things would have returned to normal.
“While health and safety remain the company’s primarily concern, the economic situation of each individual team member is also being given utmost priority.”
GG Hospitality has also been talking to Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and will be accommodating its healthcare workers and medical professionals at the hotels, free of charge.
They say they want ‘to provide them with a comfortable place to stay in these challenging times.’
Gary said: “We have taken this decision as we believe in being proactive and decisive. We feel that we have a responsibility to protect our team members and as shareholders we have put together the resources to put us in the best position to do this.
“Our company’s success is all down to our team and we feel it is critical that we look after everyone in these challenging times.
“We have been putting plans together for the past four weeks and have triggered various actions as things have developed.
“A key consideration in our plans was to try and support the wider community and more specifically our local NHS hospitals.
“By offering both our hotels without cost to the health service, we hope that this gives some support to the healthcare professionals in a time when they need it.”
He said the hotels would reopen once the situation is declared safe. “In the meantime, we will do our utmost to ensure our team members are looked after and where possible we will help the wider community,” he added.
“These are not easy times, but we are confident we will come out on the other end stronger as a company and as a community,” said Gary.
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We hope that this gives some support to the healthcare professionals in a time when they need it
Ryan Giggs and Gary Neville