Changing scenario in hospitality sector
LIKE publicans, the restaurant and hotel sector is also facing an uncertain future and as the Covid-19 restrictions begin to ease over the next couple of months, many owners will contemplate re-opening but others have said it won’ t be profitable to do so.
The Restaurants Association of Ireland has said 120,000 jobs in the sector could be lost permanently in the coming two months if action is not taken to help it.
The organisation has put forward a nine-point Covid-19 Crisis Recovery Plan focusing on issues such as VAT reduction, rent measures and wage supports. The RAI says around 90% of restaurants here are currently closed.
The plan includes a call for a 0% rate of VAT for the duration of the crisis and the year after it, followed by a 9% rate for the next five years.
It wants banks to waive fees until a vaccine is found, as well as a moratorium on existing loan repayments and the application of ECB rates on loans.
On insurance, it wants payouts assured for restaurants that have business interruption cover, along with forbearance and a guarantee that cover will not be suspended while firms are closed.
It is also seeking grants from Government to help firms with liquidity over the six months after they resume opening.
The RAI also wants a ban on utility companies cutting off services and seeking payments when restaurants are closed.
On the issue of rates, the plan envisages a write-off for restaurants and hospitality firms until a vaccine is found.
In order to encourage social distancing, the industry wants licenses for outdoor tables and chairs waived for a year.
Locally, many restaurants and cafés are re-opening on a takeaway basis while also some are extending their businesses to online offerings.
Some sixteen creative members of Sligo Food Trail are still open for business.
From cafes and coffee roasters, to brewers and egg suppliers, they are offering food and beverages, often in innovative new presentations.
Sligo Food Trail is encouraging everyone to support small food businesses today saying it’ ll be a great experience and could be the difference between a business surviving these unprecedented challenges.
Meanwhile, hotels too are casting a worried eye at what could possibly be in store in the next few weeks.
The Diamond Coast Hotel is located along the Wild Atlantic Way and is a popular destination for tourists visiting the Sligo and Mayo area.
Along with big visitor numbers from Ireland and abroad, the Enniscrone hotel is also in demand for weddings all year round; it is unclear whether weddings as we know them can take place later this year after the latest announcements.
“We’re obviously a very tourist, seasonal hotel but we rely predominantly on our wedding market,” General Manager, Michael Yates explains.
“We would do close to 100 weddings a year, and we’re in a situation where hotels are being allowed reopen on this phased basis, they’re saying intimate gatherings and weddings can go ahead from the 20 th of July, but what’s an intimate wedding?
“My interpretation of that and your interpretation of that could be the difference of 50 people and then the same goes from phase 5, the 10 th of August, they’re saying larger weddings could go ahead, but on a restricted basis.
“Is that a restricted basis based on there is no music allowed, or that there is music but no dancing?
“Will it mean that we can go ahead with larger number of two to three hundred people but there has to be one metre of space between them at their table and then they can’t leave their tables?
“We now have a situation where our wedding market feel that the hotels can actually reopen, but we’re actually in the dark as to whether a wedding can actually go ahead.
“It’s not just the impact of the hotels, it’s the impact of everything else with that because what you have is, we would deal with a lot of couples from Canada, the US, Australia and the UK, will it be the situation that these weddings can go ahead in some form of normality at that point, albeit with some restrictions in place, but that the guests will have to self-isolate for 14 days prior to going to the wedding, and for 14 days after they go back to their respective countries?
“This is the difficulty for us as hoteliers. Then looking at it from a business point of view, we have a situation where the Minister for Finance, up to today [last Tuesday], still hasn’t agreed to meet with our national body, the Hotel Federation, which I really can’t get my head around.”
What Mr Yates and other hoteliers want is simple: detail and further guidance on the broad announcements made in recent weeks.
“It’s clarification,” he says of what he and others in the industry seek.
“If the Minister for Finance would come out and clarify the financial aspects of it, and then if the Minister for Tourism whether it be Brendan Griffin or whoever the case may be, would come out and clarify the situations in relation to weddings and give us the rules that we will need to apply, then at least we can plan for that. We’re in a situation where we don’t know if we need to put up screens at our reception desk, do we need to put up screens at our bars, will we need to remove tables, and all of these have a cost implication and we need to plan for this as well.
“There’s a financial implication of reopening and what it is going to cost for us to reopen, and obviously what we are going to have to do is sanitise all of our hotel bedrooms, all of our public areas and that’s going to be an initial cost to us as well.
“But because there’s no clarification, then we’re still blind. And while it is a good news story that we have this road to recovery, it’s the hidden things behind it that we just don’t know.
“If we take the commercial rates being waived for a period of three months, so they’ve waved the commercial rates for a period of three months up until the end of June, but yet they’ve said hotels can’t reopen till July so there’s going to be a month of commercial rates that at the moment our local authorities are going to be looking for, even though the hotels are closed.”