The businessman starts off by exclaiming “The hospitality industry hasn’t done anything wrong! But, during the banking crisis lots of greed and selfishness led to the Government producing £500 billion to save the banking industry.” Hammering home his point he declares that, “It has taken eight months for me to receive a grant.”
Rick’s hotel is in a Tier 3 area but because of all the uncertainty surrounding the Tier system he has already taken the decision to close down his business for December and January. He thinks, “It is quite clear that the Government doesn’t understand the hospitality business, they think you can turn it off and turn it on like a tap, they are absolutely ridiculous. The hospitality industry has bent over backwards to make our premises Covid safe and our environment is probably safer than most people’s homes, but we will be shut and obviously homes will be open!”
He believes that Boris has “been frantic about saving Christmas and not wanting the Government to appear to be the Grinch.”
Rick thinks that, “It is perverse to encourage social mixing at Christmas, which is going to make it harder for the NHS to conduct a vaccination programme as people will be in hospital or off work with the virus and to me that is insane. Is it really such a big sacrifice to cancel Christmas, it’s not a difficult appeal to make to the public?”
Looking to the future Rick says that it is “even more critical that the Government starts to proactively think about, not only how to get hospitality up and running again, but how are we going to be viable?”
He concludes by saying that, “We want to survive but we also want to thrive so decisions need to be made now, not at the last minute. We have had that all year long and it’s a totally ridiculous method of government, they’ve got to think ahead and work with our industry.”
