BORIS Johnson’s comments this week urging people to ‘think carefully’ about attending Christmas parties along with the introduction of Plan B restrictions has hit the region’s hospitality industry hard.
Mr Johnson made the remark at a Covid press conference yesterday where England’s chief medical officer Chris Whitty also told people to prioritise events that “really matter to them” over the festive period, in an effort to curb the spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
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Cuma Erdem, general manager of Al Forno Italian restaurant on Darlington’s Skinnergate said that they are now seeing a constant stream of people cancelling their festive meal bookings, particularly larger parties.
He said: “The families are still coming out but it’s the Christmas parties that are cancelling saying they are looking closely at the NHS and feel it is a risk – it is a good reason they want to cancel and unfortunately there is nothing we can say or do.
“It isn’t good.”
Al Forno's in Darlington
Mr Erdem believes that the government needs to do more to support the hospitality industry which was banking on this Christmas giving them a vital boost after the lockdown of 2020’s festive period.
He said: “Of course, 100 per cent they should do more to support us.
“At the moment in Darlington 80 per cent of our staff are full-time, they want to get their normal full wage and provide for their families and pay the bills.
“We are a family-run restaurant that doesn’t want to mess around with people’s wages and people’s hours.
“But the profit margin gets so, so low it is difficult to turn a profit – you want to run a business but you want to make sure that your staff are happy too.
“You rely on having a busy Christmas to get you through January and February which can be tough.”
Mr Erdem added: “I feel sorry for everybody.
“I was in Darlington town centre today and it was absolutely dead, it is bad for everybody.
“We were so excited for Christmas this year but at the moment it doesn’t feel like Christmas at all.”
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Simon Leadbetter, co-owner of The Mowden gastropub in Darlington, also feels that the comments made by Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson yesterday have had a huge impact on venues such as his.
He said: “We hadn’t had a lot of cancellations until yesterday and today where we had about 60 covers cancel.
“It isn’t great.
“It is big tables that are cancelling; on Sunday we lost a party of 14, we’ve lost two parties of nine and a table for 14 went down to six people.
“I kind of get it because people don’t want to jeopardise their plans for Christmas but it isn’t great for us.
“The big groups are going down in numbers that are quite significant – and the Chancellor is nowhere to be seen in California.
“The cancellations have totally been fuelled by the last press conference, the whole Plan B thing didn’t seem to have any effect at all, we were still getting bookings, in fact we were turning people away, but now we are facing big holes in our booking sheet.”
File photo of The Mowden when it was awarded a 'lockdown hero' award
In North Yorkshire, The Rustique restaurant in Richmond had 26 people cancel just today and a spokeswoman said: “It is still busy but it is affecting us obviously with cancellations and people being worried about going out now as well.”
Labour has called on the Government to do more to help the industry with Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting today urging officials to “hammer out a deal to help hospitality”.
Mr Streeting also said Chancellor Rishi Sunak should “get himself on a flight back and get a grip on the situation” amid reports that he is in California on an official trip.
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