There are more closing days, and city tourism is still going down. Around ten percent of discos and the like no longer opened after the pandemic. The main reason for the shortage is a reorientation of former employees in the course of the pandemic, according to the night gastro representative Stefan Ratzenberger to ORF-Vienna. With 60,000 employees throughout Austria and around 20,000 in Vienna alone, gastronomy is the largest employer of students, according to Ratzenberger from the Association of Austrian Night Gastronomes (VÖNG). However, they usually did not benefit from the hardship fund and the like during the pandemic and therefore repositioned themselves. Now many have more or less secure jobs and “of course they don’t want to give them up as long as the sword of Damocles of the pandemic is hanging over us.”
According to Ratzenberger, between 1,000 and 1,500 students are currently employed in night gastronomy. That is a huge difference compared to the time before the pandemic. For night gastronomy, however, this is a very bad situation. According to Ratzenberger, regular operation is currently only possible to a limited extent. The smaller the place, the easier it is. The larger a restaurant, the fewer bars could be operated – just where you could now generate good sales again.
Larger bars are currently only running to a limited extent: “If a bar has several bars, only half to a maximum of two-thirds of the bars can currently be used. We also see this on the opening and closing days. Discos used to be Thursday, Friday, Saturday open. Currently only Friday, Saturday, because the staff is missing.”
City tourism is also missing. It has started a bit again, but there will be a lack of large events such as congresses, as well as the classic tourist. Here, too, the decline is clearly noticeable.
Nationwide, the result was that around 300 of around 3,000 night catering establishments closed during the pandemic and did not open again. In Vienna, one can assume that around ten percent of the approximately 700 night catering establishments will have to reckon with filing for bankruptcy, believes Ratzenberger.
Source: Nachrichten
