Hospitality industry fearing a ‘catastrophic' Christmas

Every day, Richard Hibbert does something which, as a restaurateur, he never imagined he would have to do: he gets on his phone and checks local hospital admission figures.

- THOMAS KINGSLEY, COLIN DRURY

Having had a year struggling through lockdowns and restrictions, he is desperate to glean any clue about potential future disruption at his three Retreat venues in Bolton and Lancashire.

“They’ve been steady since the summer,” he says of those figures. “And they’re still steady now but…”

The “but” is omicron. The new Covid variant is suddenly throwing a shadow over a hospitality industry that was hoping and praying it had seen off the worst of coronavirus.

As pubs and restaurants across the UK prepare for a Christmas that was supposed to help make up for almost two catastrophic years, they are suddenly facing the nightmare scenario of, at best, customer apprehension and, at worst, a new shuttering.

“As long as those [hospital] numbers stay stable, I don’t think there’ll be a lockdown and I don’t think people will be put off going out this Christmas,” says Mr Hibbert. “I think we’ve had a year and a half of this now and people are tired of the restrictions. I think they’ve got jabbed and they’ve accepted this is something that needs to be lived with. ”

And yet there is concern when he thinks about omicron. “If the government decides to lock down, it would be catastrophic for us,” he says. “We’ve spent tens of thousands becoming more Covid-secure for the past 18 months – outdoor seating, extra heating, staff training – but now we need a good Christmas to help us pay that investment back.”