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Tighter recommendations in various regions cause the restaurant industry to create a second wave of economic problems.
– Companies were already down before and now it will only get worse, says Jonas Siljhammar, CEO of the industry organization Visit.
Although the tighter restrictions are not directed at the restaurant industry, it is believed that it will affect revenue.
Several regions in Sweden have introduced stricter recommendations to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The advice is not specifically directed at the restaurant industry, but the industry is still believed to have an effect.
– Our industry has long had its own restrictions. But it affects us indirectly. I think we will be more cautious about going out to the pub or staying in hotels, says Malin Ackholt, president of the Association of Hotels and Restaurants.
According to Jonas Siljhammar, the new recommendations were immediately noticed.
– We are entering a period in which there is usually a lot of activity. Now customers, who book and place orders, react directly to the new restrictions. “We are more or less degraded and they send us emails from members who are desperate about the situation,” says Jonas Siljhammar.
After a hard spring saw the restaurant industry has seen a slight rebound during and after the summer, but now a decline is looming.
– It has been an extreme situation and now it comes with a greater spread of the infection and local restrictions, and it affects directly, says Siljhammar and believes that especially large cities are affected. So that’s where the big volumes are. And now that business travel and tourism have almost completely disappeared, it has a huge effect.
– Now the government really has to wake up. The news that subsidies will be extended so that more companies do not collapse and no more are laid off should come soon, says Siljhammar.
Malin Ackholt is inside along the same lines with continued support for the industry to survive.
– Many of these companies are viable companies that are completely paralyzed so that you do not meet and socialize. If you don’t, it will be a big problem, he says.
The reason why restaurant visits are not specifically mentioned in the new local recommendations is that they are regulated in a special order and that the Public Health Agency wants to avoid double regulation. At the same time, they don’t see restaurants as a place where the infection spreads the most.
– Actually, we don’t have many signs from infection tracking that there is such a spread of infection in that kind of environment in Sweden, says state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.
