A few thoughts on the #CancelTheCurfew plea…

So when I heard the news that they were planning to introduce a 10 pm curfew, like most hospitality operators, it felt like another skeptical rule created by BOJO to curb the growing number of Covid cases. And once again, it was penalising the leisure sector but this time what’s left of the already struggling night-time economy.

At Your Apartment, we’ve been very lucky to have strong weekday B2B trade allowing us to still perform well as a business. We were also able to continue contactless trading during the lockdown.

But like many hospitality businesses, we too rely quite heavily on domestic tourism on weekends, a lot of which is based around eating and drinking at some of Bristol’s fresh and vibrant bars and restaurants.

It left me thinking (like most ‘younger’ people), why is closing bars and restaurants a few hours early going to miraculously solve the increase in case? And the truth is, it will make a minimal difference if any at all. The risks of transmission in these settings is the same from 5 am to 10 pm as they are from 10 pm to 4.59 am should the current rule be abided by. Pumping thousands of people out onto the streets at 10 pm in fact will make it worse.

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If we’ve learned anything about this virus it’s that it’s not going away anytime soon which means we have to adapt. But personally, it is getting harder and harder to motivate one another to follow the guidelines when they keep getting more and more bizarre and unthought out. 

So for all of those operators out there support and pushing to #CancelTheCurfew – you have my full support until proven otherwise.