Our industry is on its knees.

We always aim to offer you with real advice that will either bring you money or save you money, but in this edition I am afraid I have nothing to offer.

No good news, no new tips, no new channels or no new high demand date clusters. This is very sad especially when our government can indeed fix this with a few amendments. I do not want to portray my personal opinion or get involved with politics, instead just highlight another angle to our situation. Be aware that we are not sharing ‘good’ nonsensical stories such as : ‘Marriott CEO says: each person deserves to be recognised’ , or ‘we had a great online meeting session’, or ‘ Hotel X has been sanitised’ or ‘GM at Hotel X posts inspiring video’, no the real world situation:

• UIF will no longer pay, do we layoff staff or send on unpaid leave. What happens to our staff?, all the time, effort, training, building, nurturing, when we cannot afford to pay them as there are no guests?
• There is no business. If you willing to have C19 positive guests you can have them for R2000-R4000 a week (at R429 ADR before fixed or variable costs), nevermind the cleaning needed afterwards and the new image you got being a provider for C19 positive souls. If you listed with any of the C19 essential sites you can forget getting C19 negative people wanting to self isolate at R500 a night. (source: Ubuntubeds). The only little bit of business is governmental travel for essential staff and you have no guaranteed they will settle in time if at all. OTA’s are dead quiet, few bookings come in and in CPT zero now to Nov.
• Insurance wont pay: if you have business interruption with specific cover they will repudiate your claim (except outsurance I believe?), Santam, Satib, BnBSure, Hollard all denied saying the lockdown caused the loss and not C19. Ourselves joined a class action and you can join too. If you need info just email me on jaco@hotel-revenue-manager.com
• There is no set date for local or international borders to reopen. If the government could at least decide and stick to a future date we can all work towards it, but we are in limbo, taking it day by day. We are open, cleaning, training, looking for guests but from my data and Siteminder’s below the average book is presently at 9% and global hotel index is at 40% of last year’s volume.
• None of the funds have paid out. Yes, the SMME relief and Tourism Relief havent paid (even if your are a high level BEE contributor) None of our clients that applied for funds in excess of 15 applications were awarded a single cent. Rife corruption of all grants received globally and current public purse under the premise of C19 seems to have been looted. The recent budget speech told us for every R10 we make, R8.50 is paid to service debt. The financial state of this country is long beyond recovery.
• The reopening of hotels locally and globally doesnt indicate uptick in demand, instead it indicates a desperate attempt to generate income. Many have gone under and many more will. I dont expect any improvement untill Nov/Dec and still a long way off. It is an even longer wait of you traditionally traded with a large proportion of international market.

Source: https://www.homeforhotels.com/hotel-index/?utm_source=email_pr&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sm-202006-email-global-homeforhotels&offer=none&productinterest=sm

I know many or looking and doing different things such as long term rental via estate agents but the list of alternatives is very short.

Our thoughts are with everyone

Until next time, Jaco.