Every festival.
Every convention.
Every theatre.
Every cinema.
Every restaurant.
Every cafe.
Every hotel.
Every travel company.
Every high street store.
The reality is we all took a phenomenal hit. Profit margins are not great - you are lucky to make 10% in most entertainment and hospitality industries. Lets say you lose a year, so you have to borrow to cover that year's operating costs. Lets say you got it down to 20% of your usual operating costs.
Well then, when things were back to normal you'd have potentially - at full capacity - have paid off your COVID debt in maybe five years.
Oh, wait though. We are not AT capacity though are we? We actually have increased operating costs and decreased bums on seats. If you usually made 10% at capacity but now you are at half capacity? well, you aren't making half of your normal profit because you still have the operating costs.
And the debt to service.
We are all waking up to 'the new normal', which is to say if you can't do more with less, when the debt holiday ends and the rate holiday ends and the VAT deferment ends and furlough ends and your bounceback loan payments start coming due you will hit a wall at a thousand miles per hour.
Everyone will.
Simultaneously.
You see there is an issue in the bounceback loan structure, that makes bankruptcy a good option. If you hit the wall, you don't have to pay back the first £50K and you only have to pay back pennies in the pound for all the extra debt on top of that. Big companies - big chains - got to take out more. Its what Mandy would - and did - call a moral hazard.
Add that to the fact that the supply chain is running on empty.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Death Race 2022.