Don't look back in anger – plan ahead to survive
The truth, as Oscar Wilde famously observed, is rarely pure and never simple. So it is with the commercial after-shocks of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the USA. Not simple, because it is unclear how far the downturn in business was caused by the attacks and how far it would have happened anyway. And not pure, because cynical companies have been accused of using the events as a reason to sack those they did not want to employ in any case and to cut spending they wanted to curtail long before the World Trade Center and Pentagon tragedies.
One New York restaurateur observed last week that "a lot of companies are using 11 September as an excuse to cancel Christmas parties they didn't want to pay for". It seems clear that many businesses, including hotels and restaurants, would have performed badly this quarter with or without the dark influence of Osama bin Laden's martyrs.
By no means all the effects of the attacks are imagined, however. The immediate and steep decline in hotel occupancies, which is now being confirmed by surveys, suggests that the effect of 11 September is a heavy burden. Certainly, the 22% declines in occupancies in London hotels for October are not faked and have been caused in large part by the fall in foreign visitor numbers.
Still, it is too simplistic to say that 11 September alone has caused the downturn. Certainly it contributed to it, and it probably induced a premature dive in business. It is already a commonplace among hoteliers and restaurateurs in New York to say that 11 September had little economic effect except to speed up what was already happening. Jobs have gone that were going to go anyway. Business may have fallen more sharply than was expected at the beginning of September, but that may mean a quicker recovery, which some are welcoming.
And that recovery has to be planned for, which is exactly what New York's restaurateurs are doing right now. They aren't thinking about the tragedy so much any more, they are thinking about what to offer their customers.
They are thinking about whether prices are too high - which is why the cut-price menus introduced to get diners back after 11 September have continued in many restaurants. And they are thinking about the detail of pricing too: first courses, in particular, are being abandoned by diners because they cost nearly the same as main courses, so these prices will have to come down, one recent seminar was told.
Above all, New Yorkers know that, in the medium term, they need to concentrate on business closer to home. It is New Yorkers who are helping New York restaurants to stay full; it is domestic business that their hotels are targeting most fervently.
Considering the recent statistics on foreign visitors, London would do well to take note - particularly in the light of one other lesson that the American experience can teach us: the restaurant industry grows every time the gap between the cost of eating at home and the cost of eating out narrows.
David Harris
News editor
Caterer &Hotelkeeper
