The hospitality industry is singing from the same hymn book, calling on the national government and municipalities to slash municipal rates to arrest the jobs bloodbath in the sector.
Rosemary Anderson, the national chairperson of the Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa, said the high municipal rates are suffocating a sector battling to recover from the impact of Covid-19.
“Municipal rates are now an unaffordable expense for hospitality businesses which are still battling the fall-out of Covid-19 regulations and travel bans. If the government is serious about trying to stop job losses, one way that further job shedding could be prevented and the hospitality sector helped to get back on our feet, would be the reduction of rates in the short to medium term,” said Anderson.
The sentiment of the lobby group was shared by Marc Wachsberger, MD of The Capital Hotels and Apartments.
Wachsberger said South Africa’s hotel sector is never going to recover and create the jobs the country so desperately needs if municipalities continue to lump them in the same category as commercial property and heavy industry.
“Charging hotels similar utilities costs to those levied on residential properties may well see those hotels paying the highest rate on the sliding scale for water and electricity costs – but this would still mean that hotels would pay less than half of what they do under their current classification as commercial properties,” he said.
“Furthermore, the country’s thousands of Airbnb properties and other types of accommodation in residential areas benefit from residential rates and utility prices, despite not having the potential to create hundreds of jobs that hotels do,” Wachsberger said.
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