Summer is approaching in huge strides and with it the holidays, and in a fascinating correlation the Omicron carriers are popping up again between us.
We almost forgot, but the virus spread earlier this year and led to morbidity peaks that rocked all the hotels in the country.
The hardest hit was in the independent hotels.
Last January alone, their incomes fell by about 80 percent.
Although the government refrained from announcing an official closure, in practice, Israelis rarely booked vacations, and at the same time, almost no tourists came from around the world due to restrictions on entry into the country.
The CBS data show that in January only 72,000 tourist overnight stays were registered in all hotels, which reflects a 91% reduction in occupancy compared to 2019. The average national occupancy in hotels was low and amounted to only 29% in January.
Statistics are a matter of averages, let us not miss the full picture: in January a large gap opened up between regions in the country.
Thus, for example, in Eilat, where most hotels are part of the large chains and are based on domestic tourism, occupancy in January reached 44%, and in the Dead Sea it also reached 39%.
But in other areas, which rely mainly on inbound tourism and are characterized mainly by independent hotels, occupancy has reached only about half of Eilat and the Dead Sea.
In Tiberias and Jerusalem, occupancy barely reached 19% in January, and in Tel Aviv, too, occupancy was only 22%.
About 200,000 citizens in the country are employed in hotels.
They include: receptionists, maids, waiters, maintenance crews, security personnel, cooks, bartenders, bartenders, contractors, etc. The owners of the independent hotels felt helpless in January and February: whether to take the workers out again and reduce current operating expenses, Or try and survive, despite high labor costs, hoping for better days?
Most of them deal with credit crunch in the bank and cash flow distress.
For them the state grants are an oxygen balloon, which will prevent them from being swallowed up by the capitalists, who own the big hotel chains.
For consumers, the principle is clear: the more diversely owned hotels there are, the more competition there is for our pocket.
And yet a ray of light: from the beginning of the corona plague, tourists were only allowed to enter Israel for two weeks (early July 21).
The recent government decision to reopen the sky to tourists is a joyous occasion for hoteliers, who are beginning to see buds of recovery.
There is no doubt that the decision regarding business assistance grants, which is currently on the table of the Knesset Finance Committee, has dramatic significance for the independent hotel owners, who are preoccupied with a brutal war for economic survival.
And they, too, understand that there is no choice but to fund maintenance, renovations and procurement operations in the meantime, in order to prepare for significant waves of tourism.
However, in the meantime, the compensation money, which was promised from July-December '21, did not enter the bank accounts of the hotel owners.
The fear is that until the government transfers the grants to the independent hotel owners, there will be nothing left to save.
The author is the director of the Association of Hotels and Tourism in the Association of Chambers of Commerce.
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