Hotel and catering industry on the brink: DEHOGA-Insider angry: Germans go on vacation to malls, but everything is closed with us
Since Mallorca and other countries are no longer considered risk areas, the first wave of travel of the year is rolling. A bitter blow for local tourism, because to date there is no prospect of when hotels and restaurants will be allowed to reopen. FOCUS Online spoke to Thomas Geppert from the Bavarian Hotel and Restaurant Association.
Hotels and restaurants in Germany have been closed for over four months. Not only German citizens in need of vacation, but also the entire industry asks itself the question, when can tourism take place again within Germany and when hotels and restaurants can finally start operating again?
The Chancellor will not decide with the Prime Minister until March 22nd on how to proceed in this regard. The fact that politicians have not yet given any opening perspectives for the local catering and accommodation businesses has been sharply criticized by industry circles.
Because for many companies it is all about bare survival: if the situation continues, the state bridging aid will not be enough. Then thousands of livelihoods and hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake. In Bavaria alone, every fourth company is considering giving up a business.
Industry representatives: Private meetings are more dangerous than in hotels and restaurants with a hygiene concept
“The uncertainty and despair is huge. We now urgently need an opening perspective, ”demands Thomas Geppert from the Bavarian Hotel and Restaurant Association DEHOGA in an interview with FOCUS Online. “It cannot be that everyone is now on vacation abroad, but tourist travel is not possible in Germany,” he criticizes.
Geppert believes that the fact that open hotels and restaurants could drive up the number of infections again is a completely wrong assumption: “If everyone meets privately over Easter and sits together in the living room, it is much more dangerous than when people are in restaurants and hotels who have invested a lot of money in hygiene concepts, ”he explains. “We are part of the solution and not the problem.” He and the entire industry can no longer understand that the federal and state governments have relaxed the contact restrictions in private, but areas with functioning protection and hygiene concepts must remain closed.
Because everything is closed in Germany, there are evasive movements abroad
The Robert Koch Institute also confirms that classic vacation travel is not an infection driver. In fact, an analysis of the number of infections last summer (Epidemiological Bulletin 8/2021) shows that most of the infections did not take place in traditional holiday countries, but in the home countries of many people working in Germany. Since traditional holidaymakers usually have little contact with the local population and do not stay in private households but in hotels and holiday apartments, the risk of infection is also reduced.
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"Hotels in Germany were not closed primarily because of the risk of infection, but rather to restrict people's mobility," says Geppert. "But now we have confirmed what we have long feared, that there will be more evasive movements abroad and that this will put the industry at a disadvantage in this country," he denounces.
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Gastronomy and hotel industry still closed
As the number of infections is currently increasing, the association is also calling for a move away from incidence-based openings to concept openings. "Companies with a hygiene concept should be allowed to open – and if there is a fear that people will move from high-incidence areas to low-incidence areas, we should implement a rapid test strategy, for example." This test strategy must be expanded by the municipalities. A good example is Austria, where there are public test stations that work without complications.
Geppert is still holding on to the hope that hotels and restaurants will open at Easter. “We don't want to bend and break, but if a hygiene concept is in place and the risk of infection is low, why should hotels and bars remain closed?” Says Geppert.
Outdoor catering, in particular, where the risk of infection is almost zero, should at least be allowed to go into operation as soon as possible. Especially since this would create safe places where those distance rules have to be observed that are disregarded at private meetings in the park. "It makes no sense that entire industries have to close for months, but private contacts, which harbor a high risk of infection, are loosened – that is simply no longer acceptable."