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“In summer we had already foreseen that winter was going to be bad”, acknowledged Manel Casals, general director of the Barcelona Hotel Association. The sector demands aid.
The Barcelona hotels have had a occupancy between 20% and 30% during the Christmas holidays and thus close a “lazy” and “bad” holiday period. This was assured to the Catalan News Agency (ACN) by the general director of the Barcelona Hotel Association, Manel Casals, who has confessed that the figures were as predicted: “Nothing that we did not expect.” “In summer we had already foreseen that winter was going to be bad and when we saw that the countries were once more putting restrictions on both their daily lives and traveling, we already saw that we were going badly and that reservations were paralyzed,” he explained. that the hotels in the Catalan capital depend above all on the foreign visitor.
The exception has been New Year’s Eve, a holiday that usually involves a rebound in employment and that has been located in 60% on time on both December 31 and January 1. The Hotel Guild attributes these percentages to the combination of the “insecurity” perceived by visitors in the midst of the wave of the omicron variant of the coronavirus and the measures imposed in Catalonia: “The restrictions they have placed on us have ended up killing us” . And it is that they anticipated that 85% of establishments would be open during the month of December and finally they have been around 70%.
Waiting for the Mobile
To overcome the hotel situation, they trust that business tourism and, especially, “very important” events such as the Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) in February bring more guests. That is why they hope that the restrictions that the general population has suffered during the Christmas holidays to reduce COVID-19 infections “will allow us to reach the month of February with different conditions and can ensure that these events can be held.” Otherwise, they warn, “its continuity is in danger.”
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Aids
They claim aid because they fear that the recovery will take time to come. While waiting for Easter, the sector predicts that the foreign visitor, the main public in Barcelona hotels “will not return actively.” Because, They demand “direct aid” from the Generalitat and a tourist promotion campaign to make up for losses. They claim that they have been “a very respectful sector” with the restrictions and of the most affected, since “practically until June the client might not come”. “Once the measures that lead to a direct impact on businesses are taken, what we do demand from the Administration are these aid,” insisted Casals, complaining because the Government has not responded to the demand that the Guild has publicly transferred to him. written”.
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