Existing upper limits would not cover losses by large hotels and restaurants.
Vienna warns of massive disadvantages for large tourism companies: City Councilor for Economic Affairs Peter Hanke (SPÖ) and Tourism Director Norbert Kettner called on Monday to adjust the lockdown revenue replacement and the fixed cost subsidy to large companies. The upper limit of 800,000 euros for both support measures would not cover the losses of large hotels and restaurants.
“Large companies in the accommodation and catering sectors are disadvantaged in the current funding regime,” criticized Hanke. He referred to data from Statistics Austria, according to which there were around 48,000 companies in Austria's hotel and catering industry in 2018 – and around 50 of them had an annual turnover of more than 20 million euros. At around 470 it is more than five million euros.
“We are talking about around 500 companies that cannot fully compensate for their losses or lost sales due to the current funding limit of EUR 800,000 in the case of sales replacement or fixed cost subsidies and may thus be brought into an economically worrying situation.”
The importance of these companies for the labor market, for example, is great. “If these companies fall through the funding network, this could exacerbate the tense situation on the labor market and, in the worst case, even risk key companies leaving the market,” warned Hanke. According to tourism director Norbert Kettner, Vienna's share cannot be calculated exactly. But especially in city tourism there are qualified full-time jobs, he pointed out. Kettner expects an initial recovery from Easter 2021 – if vaccines are already available by then.
