UKH hospitality faces "existential risk" as Best Western proposes hotels as isolation hospitals

Existential risk

UKHospitality

, the UK's hotel and catering industry body, has today called on the UK Government and the devolved administrations to improve their package of business support for hospitality as one of the most vulnerable to isolation and lockdown as the coronavirus continues to spread.

UKH described there being an "existential risk" to hospitality businesses, from small independent pubs to well-known high street restaurant brands and global hotel chain. Many of those businesses were already working on tight margins in a highly-competitive industry.

Proposed mitigation measures

Kate Nicholls, CEO of UK Hospitality sought additional support for the industry, including:

• immediately suspending business rates payments for all hospitality businesses for this year,
• extending Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) coverage to hospitality businesses of all size,
• short-terms subsidies of staff wages where trade falls markedly,
• industry suppliers, including landlords, must be discouraged from pursuing businesses for arrears.

Whilst the relief may be helpful to the industry, if implemented, the unintended effect may be simply to shift the losses and cash-flow problems on to other parties, for example local authorities (in the case of lost business rates), landlords (in the case of rent) and suppliers.

Hotels as isolation hospitals

Hotels may yet have an important part to play in the crisis. Rather than close, it has been suggested that hotels could become temporary isolation hospitals, as has been proposed by franchise membership organisation Best Western. Hotels already have the facilities to allow people to self-isolate and have the facilities to allow convalescence without the same risk of cross-infection that open hospital wards can have. If entire hotels can be commandeered by a public body for the 2012 Olympics (as some were by LOCOG), there is no reason a similar measure cannot be introduced now.