The world is ringing in New Year amid rising Covid infection. And so is the hospitality industry, which was hoping to recover losses with year-end revelry. Let's look at what it means for the sector
India’s Omicron case tally reached 578 on Monday, although no death has been reported so far. And the active cases stood at 75,841. The trend is similar, and the period too. The end of 2020 was also marked under the shadow of Covid-19, which took a deadly turn by March-April, claiming lakhs of lives.
So, as the world is venturing into another unknown territory, nations are taking steps to avert what is known to all now -- the havoc that the pandemic can cause. The WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has summed it well: ‘An event canceled is better than a life canceled.’
But amid all this, businesses and the livelihood of crores of people are also being affected. The Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) estimates that over 20-30% of establishments in the organized sector comprising around 60,000 hotels and 5 lakh restaurants have already shut shop since the outbreak of the pandemic.
On Monday, the Centre issued another set of advisory to all the states and UTs, saying that they may consider imposing need-based, local curbs and restrictions, to control the crowd during the festive season.
Several states including Delhi, UP, and Maharashtra have already imposed night curfew. Mumbai civic authorities have banned New Year celebrations in closed or open spaces. Starting January 1, Haryana is banning access to public places for both the unvaccinated and single-dose vaccinated.
While dozens of countries have started giving booster shots, India will start administering them as a precautionary measure to healthcare and frontline workers from January 10.
It all has come at a time when the hospitality sector was steadily inching towards some normalcy.
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