Join Operation Recuperation to give healthcare workers a well-deserved break post-COVID-19

Travel blog­ger Rachel Sher­wood is col­lect­ing pledges from accom­mod­a­tion pro­viders and second home own­ers to give health­care work­ers on the front lines of the coronavir­us SARS-CoV­‑2 fight a well-deserved break. It’s called Oper­a­tion Recuperation.

Can you gift a future stay in your hotel or second home to our health­care workers?

I’m hop­ing the answer is “Yes”. My name is Rachel Sher­wood and I’m run­ning a UK-based COVID-19 char­it­able ven­ture called Oper­a­tion Recu­per­a­tion. We’re col­lect­ing pledges of future hotel nights and second home stays to help front­line health­care staff recov­er from the fight against the virus.

Since I star­ted the ven­ture in March, Oper­a­tion Recu­per­a­tion has received pledges for 150 com­pli­ment­ary stays ran­ging from lux­ury beach resorts to tiny cot­tages and it’s gain­ing momentum. We’re primar­ily focused on the UK but we’re giv­ing donors the option to nom­in­ate hos­pit­als to source the bene­fi­ciar­ies so, real­ist­ic­ally, they can be loc­ated any­where in the world.

When we’re on the oth­er side of this crisis, our health­care pro­viders will be psy­cho­lo­gic­ally as well as phys­ic­ally exhausted and they’ll need some prop­er R&R. It’s heart-warm­ing to see so many com­pan­ies and indi­vidu­als giv­ing what they can dur­ing these hugely chal­len­ging times for the hos­pit­al­ity sector.

Oper­a­tion Recu­per­a­tion has received dona­tions for stays through­out the UK as well as in Spain, Italy, France, Greece, Bar­ba­dos, India, Thai­l­and and Indone­sia. Pledges are com­ing in for lux­ury resorts, cosy cot­tages, multi-fam­ily hol­i­day homes and even a glamp­ing Landrover for a UK over­land trip.

At the end of March, Indone­sian hotels Nihi Sumba and Fivele­ments Retreat Bali kicked off the hoteli­er dona­tions and gif­ted sev­en nights for what will be an unfor­get­table trip for our health­care work­ers. Since then, the Karma Group has donated week-long stays in its lux­ury hotels in Berkshire, the Isles of Scilly, Tuscany, Crete, Goa and Bali. 

St Brides Bay Cot­tages in Pem­broke­shire, Wales has ral­lied its cot­tage own­ers and pledged at least 20 free stays. The fam­ily-run firm adop­ted the scheme to say thank you to the health­care work­ers risk­ing their lives to keep the UK safe. We’re work­ing with a num­ber of oth­er hol­i­day rent­al com­pan­ies to put togeth­er sim­il­ar large-scale dona­tion packages.

When the time is right, we’ll ask hos­pit­als to nom­in­ate front-line health­care work­ers to bene­fit from the pro­gram and their names will be entered into a draw. The more dona­tions we receive, the more names we can pull out of that hat so please give what you can. We won’t be ask­ing you to hon­our the pledges until life has returned to some semb­lance of nor­mal­ity and we’ll work around your black­out dates.

Here’s how you can help

If you’re a hotel group or an inde­pend­ent hoteli­er, a cot­tage rent­al com­pany or a second home own­er, wheth­er you own a castle or a camp­site, please think about donat­ing a future stay to Oper­a­tion Recu­per­a­tion. Every pledge really will make a dif­fer­ence, wheth­er it’s a week­end for two or the hol­i­day of a lifetime.

To pledge a stay, email me at help@operationrecuperation.com or leave a mes­sage on social media: Face­book, Ins­tagram, Twit­ter.

Thank you!

About the author

Rachel Sher­wood has 30 years’ exper­i­ence in sales and mar­ket­ing and was instru­ment­al in estab­lish­ing lux­ury hotel mar­ket­ing com­pany Kiwi Col­lec­tion in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) region. She has worked on a num­ber of con­sult­ing pro­jects in the hos­pit­al­ity sec­tor and, in addi­tion to Oper­a­tion Recu­per­a­tion, cur­rently runs Low Sea­son Go Sea­son, a blog pro­mot­ing low sea­son travel. She lives in Oxford­shire, Eng­land with her hus­band and two step-children.