Pubs and restaurants have warned of plummeting sales and “decimated” bookings, as pressure increases on the government to offer urgent financial support to struggling hospitality businesses.
The weekend just passed should have been the busiest trading period of the Christmas season, but customers chose to stay away, said Nick Mackenzie, the chief executive of the pub and brewery chain Greene King, which runs 2,700 pubs, restaurants and hotels across the UK.
“Demand has dropped, bookings have been decimated, some parts of the country we are 70%, 80% down on 2019, so the situation is pretty unsustainable,” Mackenzie told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday.
Warnings from the government had led to “lockdown in all but name”, Mackenzie said,
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