Guillermo Villarreal
01/06/2021 15:51
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 01/06/2021 3:51 PM
Reservations located between 17% and 20% for the next days of
"high season"
, and in the best cases, up to 25%;
last year the average percentage reached 90%.
For February, worse, the figure is in one digit: an example, a 4-star with 130 rooms today has only 10 rooms reserved, 8%.
For the hotel industry, the season is a calamity.
"It is more expensive to have it open than closed," laments the owner of a traditional and very careful 4-star hotel in the city center, who describes a "bleak" outlook for the sector that he represents from the vice-presidency of the Gastronomic Hotel Business Association (AEHG) from Mar del Plata, Jesus Osorno.
Despite the movement that could be seen at certain times of the season, in shopping centers or on the beaches, even with risky crowds, and the incipient reactivation shown by the gastronomic sector,
the hotel industry is hardly a witness.
It is because in the other places it is a heterogeneous public: mixed among those thousands of tourists who animate the season, there are people from Mar del Plata, and the people from Mar del Plata do not use the services of the hotel industry.
"If you don't come by bus, by route or by plane, you won't get to the hotel," they say
A small percentage of travelers stayed in hotel rooms, but the vast majority did so in
their own houses or apartments,
in apartments for temporary rent or in houses rented in open areas, such as in Sierra de los Padres.
Osorno, a lifetime in the business, understands that such a scenario responds to "a combo" that includes the competition of the apartments for rent "that nobody controls", "the confusing message of politics" and the fact of
not being able to handle the nocturnal problem.
He assures that the conjunction of these events "has repercussions and generates fear in the people, because although the infections grow, those rumors of the end of the season or not, what the policy transmits, amplifies the problem."
"The departments do not pay taxes, they are not controlled, instead we comply with protocols, we pay real estate taxes, social charges, employees, competition is unfair and it also affects the health security of the city, why who controls that in a department they get involved up to 8 people? "
The first weekend of the season, which the Government authorized as of December 1, gave good signals to the sector.
There was good occupancy in general, although in no case over 50%, and then the New Year's weekend the occupancy averaged 40%.
In between, the numbers plummet.
The same forward.
"I ask you: would you book for the 18th when it is rumored that there is closure? It is not clear what the policy transmits," says the businessman, and the consequence was evident when the hotels in the city began to receive cancellations of the reservations they had taken in the face of the rumor that restrictions would be applied ..
Then the governor of the Province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, and the mayors of the Atlantic Coast and other tourist destinations in the interior of Buenos Aires, decided not to take restrictive measures, at least for now.
Eduardo Palena, 2nd vice president of the AEHG, head of the Hotel & Spa República, explained that the goal that the hoteliers had set themselves was "to cover the accumulated debts in 9 months", the time the hotels remained closed, the time in which " paying salaries and postponing services was prioritized. "
The businessman regretted that they can no longer count on the help of the State, which served to pay salaries, the ATPs.
Palena said that the Previaje program, the pre-sale launched by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports of the Nation with a 50% refund on trips through Argentina by 2021, did not give the result that the sector expected.
How to continue?
"With concrete things, not with good words from the civil servants, we need concrete facts that help to shovel this exceptional situation such as the pandemic. We are ordered, we comply with the protocols, and today instead of being able to pay the debts, we are increasing them" explains Osorno.
The complex situation in which the sector finds itself, after the first week of January, also jeopardizes the job stability of temporary employees, who could be suspended and start to collect part of their salary.
The AEHG authorities do not know the number of hotels that did not open their doors for the season, among which there are a good number of trade unions, and consequently neither how many will not reopen, "but it will be a significant number," they said.