Letter from… Devon

By Drew Aspinwall

I have written previously in Newgate News about how the lockdown impacted the tourism sector in the South West. Whilst there was brief rally in activity during August, with people desperate for a change of scene, for the most part it won’t have been enough to have steadied the ship.

Now, in late September, those businesses that did welcome visitors back will be looking carefully and trying to plan what the future of their enterprise looks like.

The impact of Government rhetoric firstly around ‘essential’ and now ‘viable’ jobs is felt hardest in hospitality, tourism and the cultural industries. The post holder would consider their job essential, certainly to their livelihood and that of their families, whilst a job is viable if the role has a continued demand for their particular skill, service or product and most critically, the conditions under which it is possible to operate.

Cashflow and trying to plan will be top of the concerns for all businesses at the moment and having previously worked in the culture and entertainment PR, I have also been watching developments in that sector with interest, not least because many of my friends working in the arts are facing a very uncertain future as a result of Covid-19.

One of my former bosses, Rupert Goold now Artistic Director of the Almeida Theatre, said in last week’s Evening Standard that in addition to the absolute lack of income from theatre ticket sales due to coronavirus “above all it has been the endless uncertainty and how that has been continuously eroded our ability to plan.” “We simply need greater clarity around dates. Even if it means bad news, don’t give us promises we know can’t be kept or false hope.”

The impact of Government decisions is quickly felt within the supply chain. In the arts this is the freelance artists, practitioners and technical crew whilst in the tourism industry there is also a whole supplier ecosystem which covers food and drink suppliers, cleaning and laundry and secondary spend on services, attractions and retail by visitors, all of whom are looking for certainty in order to plan and remain open for visitors in the future.

In 2020, every day brings a new challenge. For businesses, with the risks outnumbering the certainties and so much being outside one individual’s control, never has the old adage, ‘Fail to plan or plan to fail’, sounded so out of date.