NEWS
DATA FROM ANALYSTS SHOWS EXTENT OF COVID-19 IMPACT
‘SUPPERS FOR SUPERHEROES’ DISHES UP 500 MEALS A WEEK FOR GLASGOW ROYAL INFIRMARY STAFF Laura and Shane McKenzie, owners of Glasgow’s Cathedral House Hotel in Glasgow, have been providing 500 meals a week to staff at Glasgow Royal Infirmary with the help of Red Onion chef and owner, John Quigley, and his daughter, Rosie, and Chef Claire Bell of Bar 91 and her best friend. Laura told Hotel Scotland, “After we were forced to close the hotel Shane got in touch with the Celtic Charitable Foundation, he has done fundraising for them in the past, and we were told they could help finance food supplies and we came up with this idea, “Suppers for Superheroes’. “We thought Glasgow Infirmary staff doing long days and nights just didn’t have the time to shop and cook when they got home from shifts. So we decided to provide nutritious meals for them instead. “We had the cash for the food we just needed chef volunteers and John Quigley of Red Onion immediately came to mind. He said ‘Yes’ right away and stepped in with daughter Rosie and Claire Bell the chef at Bar 91 and her best friend Paula also volunteered. We needed people who were close because of the social distancing required in the kitchen.
4 • HOTELSCOTLAND
“They do a two and three days shifts, and Shane, myself and my two Anna, and Callum box up the food, and it is picked up at 7pm every night - so staff can pick it up at the start of their shift or the end. We do 30 vegetarian meals and 70 meat meals and we have a menu that is scalable and not too complicated. “The feedback has been brilliant. It has also been really nice to be able to do something for the NHS staff on the frontline. Initially, we had enough funding for six weeks, but we have been careful with our purchasing and have used Failte for just about all the food but we have also had donations from Tommy at the Fruit Market. This means we can run a little longer and we are also looking at providing some extra meals for care home workers too.” The family, who have operated Cathedral House for two years all work in hospitality except for daughter Emily who is a newlygraduated Junior Doctor, who is now working in Dundee. Laura concludes, “Obviously having Emily working as a Junior Doctor brings it all a little closer to home. But at least we know that the staff at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary are getting nutritious and tasty meals to help them continue their good work.”
HotStats data, in its first analysis of full profitand-loss performance since the COVID-19 pandemic swept through the global hospitality industry, reveals that European hospitality nose dived in March. February data was unremarkable, but March saw gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR) for the month fall a record 115.9%, the biggest YOY decline since April 2009, when GOPPAR dropped 37.9% in the thick of the Global Financial Crisis. It was the first time since HotStats began tracking monthly European data in October 1996 that GOPPAR as a value turned negative at -€8.33. RevPAR was down 66.2% YOY, the result of a 44.6-percentage-point drop in occupancy, combined with an 11% YOY drop in average rate. As all ancillary revenue plummeted, it brought TRevPAR down 61.6%, again the largest YOY drop in the KPI since April 2009, when TRevPAR declined 23.5%. The data shows that COVID-19 is hitting revenue and profit ~3x harder than the Global Financial Crisis and ~4x harder than 9/11. Labour costs were down 28.8% YOY on a per-available-room basis and total overhead costs were down 25.3% YOY. The profit margin was down 45.7 percentage points to -13.1%, the first time HotStats has recorded a negative profit margin for the region. China, the recognised genesis of the coronavirus, continues to suffer negative performance across the breadth of KPIs month to month, but there are signs of improvement. Occupancy in March inched up 7.3 percentage points over February, and while GOPPAR was still in the red, it was 64% higher in March over February in dollar value. In Hubei province, where the coronavirus was first detected, occupancy in March was already up to 58.9%, only an 11-percentagepoint decrease from the same time a year ago. Though much of that occupancy is likely a function of medical workers using the hotels for accommodations, GOPPAR was positive for the month at $22.60, after a negative month of February. HotStats outlook suggests that “hoteliers will be hard-pressed to generate a modicum of revenue throughout the rest of the year and likely will have to wait until there is a vaccine to see profits normalise. In Scotland STR have forecast that Hotels in Glasgow will see occupancy drove by 20.3% in 2020 with a decrease in RevPAR of 25.9% while Edinburgh will fare worse with occupancy levels dropping 21.9% and RevPAR down 32.8%”
