Yesterday Val attended the Cross Party Group for Tourism and the question was raised again regarding a possible date for the tourism sector to reopen in Wales.
We know that our businesses face many challenges and timing is everything; ensuring that staff return at the right time, trained and ready to hit the ground running, making sure you have adequate stock in place and of course ensuring that visitors feel safe and ready and able to travel, so timing is going to be crucial.
The WG are unable to give us a specific date as any decisions to reopen will be based on a number of unknown factors e.g infection rates, vaccination rates, hospital admissions etc etc.
The Coronavirus Control Plan for Wales released in January does provide a clear set of criteria for entering or exiting an alert level and what restrictions are associated with each alert level.
Data is released daily by the WG and Public Health Wales, and the WG provide daily updates which may assist you with your reopening plans and understanding of the current situation across Wales (not just in your local area).
Each business will require different levels of forward planning and notice to reopen, so we strongly advise businesses to look at each of the Alert Levels and think carefully what each alert level would mean for your business, some questions you might want to consider could be:
- Which level would we need to be in in order for my business to legally be allowed to reopen?
- Does that level come with additional restrictions?
- Would the level of restrictions work for my business e.g If I was a restaurant but couldn't serve past 6pm and no alcohol what would this mean to the business?
- Could I review my business model, or look at other markets whilst additional restrictions are in place/move through the levels in order to be sustainable?
- What will my staff/stock requirements need to be at each level?
- Do I have staff or do I need to recruit staff?
We would urge all our businesses to use the control plan and the PHW data to help plan ahead and when we are given the green light that we are all 'Good to go'!
