'We’re on our knees': Sask. hospitality industry crippled by Omicron
Jim Bence says the combination of the Omicron COVID-19 variant and freezing temperatures hammered the Saskatchewan hospitality industry over the holiday season.
“We're seeing hotels that those meetings and events just completely evaporated for January, February, anything that was on books, was gone by mid-December,” said Bence, president and CEO of the Hospitality Saskatchewan Association.
“We're out of money. We're on our knees.”
Bence says some employees that were laid off at the beginning of the pandemic were rehired and laid off again, creating less confidence in the industry and adding extra stress to the employees that remained.
According to Bence, the restaurant industry is "hanging on by fingernails."
“When you talk about on-table service you get a situation in which the variant has come up, people are a little bit more hesitant again,” he said.
“The cold, the polar vortex for three weeks, I mean people just really hunker down.”
While some restaurants have been able to pivot by adding a delivery component to their business, the hotel industry can't do the same thing.
“You cannot make somebody stay at your property,” Bence said. “You may have 200 rooms and you might have filled 100 of them on any given night, now you're down to you’re filling 20 or 30.”
“We're coming up upon two years of devastating revenue losses,” said Shawna Nelson, chair of the Saskatoon Destination Marketing Hotels Incorporated.
“The year ahead doesn't look too promising with the latest challenges that we're having with Omicron, and of course then there's the hint of other variants that are around the corner. This has created an environment of uncertainty.”
But, Nelson says, it’s not all bad news for hotels.
“We have the Saskatchewan advantage,” she said. “Just the other day our city received a lead for a bid for something that's coming right here around the corner in March because (of) the restrictions that are in Ottawa right now.
“Anyone that's planning anything in the next couple of months and are unable to do so in certain provinces, well, we are open and we hope they would consider looking at Saskatchewan.”
Nelson, who’s also the director of sales and marketing at the Sheraton Cavalier Hotel in Saskatoon, says she’s had to get creative in using space.
“We did take a look at that, and provide packages for working offices here at the hotel,” she said.
“Same with weddings. When the gathering numbers were different but yet you could still meet in the restaurants, because our hotel has a number of different restaurant outlets there were weddings that were happening in our food and beverage outlets, rather than in a traditional meeting space.”
Despite the creativity, Bence says with fixed costs reaching up to $250,000 a month, some hotels won’t be able to survive.
“Our downtown properties in Saskatoon anecdotally for the month of January are sitting at anywhere between 25 and 30 per cent occupancy. You can't even turn the lights on for that amount of money,” he said.
“Arguably we're in far worse shape than we were even a year ago.”
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Spring allergy season has begun. Where is it worse in Canada?
The spring allergy season has started early in many parts of Canada, with high levels of pollen in some cities already. Experts weigh in on which areas have it worse so far this season.
'Nonsense:' Doug Ford slams lawsuits filed by Ontario school boards against social media platforms
Premier Doug Ford says that lawsuits launched by four Ontario school boards against a trio of social media platforms are “nonsense” and risk becoming a distraction to the work that really matters.
Several flight attendants from Pakistan have gone missing after landing in Canada
Multiple flight attendants from Pakistan International Airlines have abandoned their jobs and are believed to have sought asylum in Canada in the past year and a half, a spokesperson for the government-owned airline says.
Record-breaking N.B. lottery winner kept winning ticket on dresser for nearly a year
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
Multiple bridges in Calgary shut down for police incident
Calgary police have shut down a number of bridges into and out of the downtown core as officers deal with a distraught individual.
King Charles calls for acts of friendship in first public remarks since Kate's cancer diagnosis
King Charles III gave public remarks for Maundy Thursday, addressing the importance of acts of friendship, following his and Catherine, Princess of Wales’ cancer diagnoses.
Fallen crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years in prison
Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud that unravelled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world's most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency.
A dog and a bird formed an unlikely friendship. Their separation has infuriated followers
Peggy is a stout and muscular Staffordshire bull terrier, and Molly is a magpie, an Australian bird best known for swooping on humans during breeding season, not for befriending dogs. But in an emotional video posted online, Peggy’s owners announced that the animals had been separated.
Tipping is off the table at this Toronto restaurant
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.