The hospitality industry is taking a knock: fewer people are eating at restaurants than in 2019
Consider first people’s willingness to go out and about. A mobility index using real-time data from Google and constructed byincludes visits to workplaces, retail and recreation sites, and transport hubs. This measure has been reasonably stable in America, albeit at levels below pre-pandemic norms, and has fallen a little in Britain and Germany in recent days. But underlying those headline figures are bigger differences depending on the kind of activity.
Other measures show that the hospitality industry is taking a knock. Fewer people are eating at restaurants than in 2019, according to data from OpenTable, a booking platform. In America and Britain there were 12-15% fewer diners in the week to December 20th than in the same period in 2019 . Omicron also seems to have contributed to travel disruptions. That has been most notable in America and China, where domestic air travel had more or less returned to normal. In the week to December 26th some 3,500 domestic and international flights that started or finished in America were cancelled, according to FlightAware, a data firm—about 2.5% of the total number of flights. That compares with a cancellation rate of 0.7% in the same week in 2019.
These indicators give only a limited view of the economy. But they may well capture the areas that are most likely to be affected by fresh outbreaks of covid-19. Analysts at Moody’s, a rating agency, have revised down their estimates of growth in America in early 2022 partly because of reduced spending on travel.
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