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CAM RANH — The new Alma Resort has upped the ante on its efforts to protect guests and staff from COVID-19 following a flare-up of the virus in Viet Nam, introducing a second round of stringent health and safety measures.

The beachfront resort’s latest changes range from temporarily closing its 13-villa spa, 170sqm gym and yoga room, suspending buffet breakfast at its main restaurant Alma Garden and expanding its in-room dining menu, to requesting guests fill in a health declaration using a QR code and furnishing them with an electronic COVID-19 information kit upon check-in.

The 30-hectare resort’s new measures support the Vietnamese authorities’ social distancing requirements in numerous provinces including Khanh Hoa this week, after COVID-19 was detected in Da Nang late last month.

The latest changes at Alma, that first opened in December last year before temporarily closing from mid-April until late-May due to the onset of the global pandemic and the first wave of restrictions it prompted in Viet Nam, compound a host of health and safety standards the resort previously introduced. 

Body temperature checks, provision of hand sanitiser, spacious set-ups of facilities such as restaurant tables and sunbeds to ensure physical distancing, continual disinfection of common guest and staff areas as well as frequent touch points such as door handles and dining surfaces, and deep cleaning of guest rooms are among an array of measures the resort implemented early this year in response to the virus.

Alma staff have undergone COVID-19 safety training and are required to regularly wash their hands and wear face masks.

“After 99 days straight of no new cases of COVID-19 via community transmission, the flare-up in Da Nang hits home that we can never rest on our laurels in this brave new world,” said general manager Herbert Laubichler-Pichler.

“At Alma we all think of ourselves as housekeeping staff, all upholding cleaning and disinfection protocols, and we are doing everything we possibly can to ensure only the highest levels of health, safety and hygiene for all of our guests, our staff and our community.”

Under the resort’s second wave of measures, the buffet breakfast at the resort’s main restaurant, Alma Garden, has been suspended. Breakfast is now held at the Alma Food Court, where the majority of food is prepared into individual portions to avoid guests handling the same cutlery. 

Guest numbers permitted in resort venues such as restaurants, the waterpark, science museum and putting green have been further tightened to help ensure social distancing.

Laubichler-Pichler also said the resort’s two- and three-bedroom pavilions with large living and dining areas, kitchens and private pools had proven to be the most popular accommodations with guests in the wake of COVID-19 due to “a perception of a home away from home that’s safer, where you don’t have to mix with others as much”. Alma expanded its in-room dining menu to cater to increased demand. — VNS