TOURISM’S SUMMER OF CHAOS
Businesses say a lack of clarity over reopening date will be a disaster
TOURISM businesses say they are facing ‘disaster’ because of the lack of detail about when they will be able to operate again.
Nicola Sturgeon’s route map for easing lockdown does not provide a date for when staycations can resume and the tourist industry can open up again.
The ‘stay at home’ order will end in early April but there is not yet any date given for people to be able to travel to other parts of the country, while the ban on crossing the Border remains in force indefinitely.
Pubs, hotels and restaurants are in the dark about when they can viably resume, as the route map sets out only a possible return to Level 3 of the restrictions framework on April 26 – which still includes a 6pm curfew for hospitality premises and no alcohol sales.
Tanja Lister, of the Kylesku Hotel in Sutherland, told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland programme: ‘What we’ve been given is a route map to another lockdown. Let’s be clear, Level 3 for us... is actually what closed most hotels in the last part of 2020, so for our industry it’s a potential disaster. If you were booking a holiday right now somewhere in the UK, you wouldn’t book it in Scotland.
‘We will be left with very serious problems in the summer if this doesn’t change soon.’
On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson set out a ‘one-way road to freedom’ that could remove curbs on social contact and mean a return of major events as early as June 21.
His plans allow non-essential retail and hairdressers to reopen from April 12 at the earliest, with indoor friends and family gatherings, hotels and theatre permitted to resume from May 17.
Yesterday, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘If we become confident over the next few weeks that we can do more, then we will do more. From the last week in April, on current planning, the expectation is that the rest of retail will start to reopen, as will holiday accommodation, hospitality, gyms and hairdressers.’
The First Minister said she ‘desperately wanted’ to give a date for the end of lockdown but did not want to offer any ‘false clarity’.
She added: ‘If I were to give you a fixed and hard and fast date right now, I would pretty much be making it up and I don’t think that’s the approach I should take.’
However, Miss Sturgeon did suggest more travel within Scotland may be allowed when the ‘stay at home’ order comes to an end, which is scheduled for April 5.
Asked about the concerns of the tourism industry over the lack of a definitive date for travel, she said: ‘I will continue to give as much clarity as I can as quickly as possible... what I don’t want to do is give clarity and certainty that is on a false basis.’
She conceded it is ‘frustrating’ for firms, adding: ‘We are giving the indication that sectors should begin planning for that reopening from April 26... if we can bring that forward we will. But what I don’t want to be doing is giving people false dawns and false starts.’
She said the Level system will be reviewed, which could mean some restrictions are relaxed for hospitality firms.
A new Hospitality and Tourism Action Group is campaigning for a UK-wide reopening of tourism on May 17. The group said the announcement on lifting curbs in Scotland had been met with ‘utter dismay, confusion and anger’.
It added: ‘Rather than cautious hope, the industry now faces widespread cancellations.’
Stephen Montgomery, of the Scottish Hospitality Group, told BBC Radio Scotland: ‘We don’t know whether it’s going to be outside trading or inside trading, whether we’re going to be serving food, no alcohol, nothing.’
Fiona Campbell, of the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers, said the Government had ‘failed completely’ to set out what the changes will mean for hospitality.
‘We’ve been given a route map to another lockdown’