Hotels must take long-term view to weather crisis

Hotel operators should concentrate on long-term measures to deal with the impact of the attacks on the USA, and less on short-term cost-cutting, say consultants at Ernst & Young.

Executive consultant Lesley Ashplant said there was little to be done to increase business at the moment, but that companies should be wary of purely short-term measures.

They should not, for example, put refurbishments on hold. These could be carried out now that hotels were emptier, rather than during busier times when guests would have to be turned away.

Instead of laying people off permanently, companies should be looking at voluntary redundancies and not renewing contracts. Contract workers could be reinstated when the economy picked up.

Ashplant was confident that the economy would soon recover. "There will be less and less impact as the year goes on," she said.

But she added that one major upmarket hotel company had told her they expected business to be down by 30% in the period from 11 September to the end of the year.

She predicted that business in the next year would be "pretty flat" but that things would improve after that.