Recovery is not going to be an easy path

The tourism and hospitality sector – like many others – has been left battered and beleaguered by Covid. A jewel in Scotland’s economic crown prior to the pandemic, employing hundreds of thousands of people, the lockdowns of the past year have extracted a heavy toll.

With kitchens closed, bars dry, hotel bedrooms unsold and, eventually, the public locked out altogether, many businesses have struggled to stay afloat.

Government interventions such as the furlough scheme and business loans have helped keep the wolf from the door and a proportion of staff in work, but they have come at huge cost to the public purse and are ultimately unsustainable.

Thankfully, the swift rollout of the Covid vaccination programme across the UK has allowed for light at the end of what has been a very dark tunnel.

From Monday, hospitality venues will start to welcome customers into premises and beer gardens for the first time this year. That is welcome news but it is not a panacea.

Some restaurants and bars simply cannot make the numbers work without being able to serve alcohol indoors, and others are finding the social distancing requirements on them so onerous they cannot turn a profit.

These are all hurdles that must be addressed in the weeks and months to come as Scotland moves from crisis mode to recovery.

Fragile consumer confidence and fragile companies is a heady mix and the path to recovery is unlikely to be plain sailing.

It will be costly to the public purse, but business support must endure until the bad times are behind us.