SCOTLAND’S pubs, restaurants and hotels may not recover from the pandemic until 2022 and is dependent on a global suppression of the virus, MSPs have been warned.

Hospitality leaders have warned that businesses continue to be closed “on a daily basis” with Government support labelled “totally inadequate” to allow traders to cover the costs of enforced closures or restrictions.

Appearing in front of Holyrood’s Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee, Willie Macleod, executive director for Scotland at UK Hospitality, issued a stark warning amid the “total absence of international tourism and travel” during the pandemic.

He added: “The cities have absolutely been devastated by this, not just the hotels, but the bars and restaurants as well.

“We’re looking at occupancies in Glasgow in the first quarter of next year that are probably a quarter to a third of what we would normally expect them to be - that’s a similar position in Edinburgh.”

Mr Macleod added that a key industry metric that is showing “figures that are barely, in the first quarter of next year, enough to cover the cost of production – the cost of actually having a room lying empty”.

He warned that looking ahead to the summer season of 2021, “the picture is pretty bleak”.

He added: “Many businesses are looking towards recovery, we’re a resilient industry and we will get up and move quickly when we are able to re-open fully, but most businesses are not looking for anything like a buoyant recovery in 2021 and many are saying they don’t expect to break even until 2022.

“All of that is dependent on not just the UK and Scotland getting Covid under control but really we have to get it under control internationally before hospitality and tourism will really begin to recover.”

Stephen Montgomery, from the Scottish Hospitality Group, stressed that “nobody will argue the fact that hospitality in Scotland and across the UK has been hit more than any other sector”.

He added: “I think it’s going to be a long, long time before hospitality gets out of this. We’re looking probably 18 to 24 months before we see the next stage.

“I think there has to be some very serious interventions from Scottish Government and the UK Government – it has got to be both.”

Mr Macleod also criticsed the hospitality sector bearing the brunt of the coronavirus restrictions despite what he claimed was a lack of evidence that the virus is spread at pubs, resultants and hotels.

He said: “Research that we have undertaken suggests the incidents with Covid infection amongst staff and customers directly attributable to the hospitality businesses is fairly low.”

He added that a lot of the grants provided to the sector “don’t go anywhere near meeting the fixed costs of closure”.

He said: “The average fixed cost of closing a hotel is running at over £60,000 a month, nearly £750,000 a year. None of that is being compensated for by the grant schemes that have been made available.

“Despite the significant sums that have been made available through government, these amounts of money are inadequate – totally insufficient – to meet the costs that businesses are having to bear though enforced closure and restrictions on trading which is no fault of their own.”

Tourism Minister Fergus Ewing said details of a £60 million package of support for the tourism sector “are being developed in consultation with the industry”, adding that “details will be announced shortly”.

He added: “In respect of larger businesses, we have already supplied £14 million in the hotel support fund, which is specifically designed to support retention of about 3,000 employees in the largest employers.”