Dear Insiders,
"I admire the patience of the Germans," said an analyst from London to me this week, referring to our snail's pace when it comes to vaccinations. However, patience is definitely over now. This Wednesday, the psychologist Prof. Stefan Gruenewald from Cologne said in the Markus Lanz talk show: "The shadow routine is becoming more and more anarchic." He probably stood – as many gastronomy insiders do – at a takeaway in a busy street and counted, how often 20 pizzas were carried off in a cardboard box. Well, where are they going?
The number of frustrated, impatient juveniles are joined by an increasing number of frustrated people who obey the rules. Enough is enough. The government is not keeping its promise, it just keeps on discussing. Within two weeks, it failed to reach a decision on the - now necessary - hard lockdown. According to yesterday's poll "ARD-DeutschlandTrend", 67% of those surveyed think it is "rather right". However, almost two-thirds are also dissatisfied with the work of the federal government.
Politicians say, "let's have a look" and the virus says, "let's get started". Israel, Great Britain and the US are simply doing something. In New York, people at the age of 30 are already getting vaccinated! While we are being gently prepared for our summer holidays that might even start as late as August… While the EU already presented a model of its "Green Pass".
The German yo-yo lockdown goes on, after all. There are still no large amounts of vaccines, and the few tests we have are always sold out. And hardly anyone is talking about the hotel sector and its hardships among all this chaos. The entire industry is ready for the re-launch, but they are experiencing a different disaster at the same time: Employees leave the sector to find jobs that provide both better payment and more perspectives. Young talents are turning away and skilled employees are refusing to go on. In the second part of her HR analysis, Sylvie Konzack elaborates on this aspect of the misery. And by the way, university education is also suffering badly.
Fred Fettner digs into another strongly neglected topic: sustainability. However, a new global ranking shows how absurd it can be to put this issue into PR-heavy pigeonholes.
From the news section: Hotel properties have lost less value than expected during the pandemic in Central and Northern Europe. In Italy, corona has stirred up individual hotel groups in a revenue ranking. Accor implements its digital customer journey at an ibis in London for the first time. Under the umbrella of the IHA hotel association, 2,000 hoteliers have now filed a suit against Booking.com.
The dispute between Kempinski and its former CEO Martin Smura continues with high media interest. This week, details emerged about criminal charges against Kempinski representatives in Munich. The source of this information, an English-language website, has been down since yesterday with the note: "This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules." It was not possible for us to get serious information about backgrounds and connections in the short time available. We stay tuned.
At the end, I would like to draw your attention to two positive things: Hotelschool The Hague invites everyone interested to its science symposium on "business resilience" on 15-16 April, free of charge. For details just click on the banner on our first page!
And we publish information and package prices for companies today that want to participate in the World of Hospitality joint booth at Expo Real in October. A "real" Expo Real is planned again. Please find details also on our first page.
Happy Easter – in the shadow routine!
Yours, Maria Pütz-Willems
editor-in-chief
Your opinion? maria[at]hospitalityInside.com
