Mr. Tim Fenn:

It is very hard to speak in general on the complexity of individual hotel businesses, whether one has ten, 20, 100, 200 or 300 bedrooms. We are looking at an overall picture of the complexity and importance of hotels as an infrastructure and part of the economy and the damage done when they are taken out of local areas. When one tries to figure out where one will get to, one cannot control what is happening with regard to overseas international protection but we have to look at ways to repurpose the industry to where it should be when all of this is over and done with. This is why we call on the Government to make sure it pays attention to the marginality of some of the businesses and what happens to communities when those businesses disappear.

I suppose we have to look at the marginality of some of the businesses, what happens to communities when they disappear, what we do to get them back into the hotel trade, and to make sure they are going to be viable going forward. That is where we feed into the narrative around what is important for our society and economy. If we are serious about tourism as an industry, we have to pay particular attention to decisions around the 9% VAT rate and moving that to 13.5%. If you take it that energy costs and all kinds of other costs in hotels are going up and if the Government is adding 50% on top of the VAT because it thinks it is the right thing to do, we are saying here and now it is not the right thing to do. As a country, we have to be serious about tourism and we are now seeing some of the damage that can happen when the industry is put in peril. That is the strong message we have today.