The latest wave of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey on the social impacts of Coronavirus has been published.
This covers the Christmas/New Year period, with the survey being undertaken between 15 December 2021 and 3 January 2022. Some of the results which show the impact on tourism and hospitality businesses are that:
- Only 29% of people said that they were meeting up with family or friends in restaurants, pubs, bars or cafes (down from 34% previously)
- Only 13% said that they were going to a Christmas market (down from 22% previously)
- 35% said that they expect it would take more than a year for life to return to normal (interestingly, only 20% said that at Xmas in 2020 when vaccines were first being rolled-out, indicating that people are more pessimistic than they were a year ago).
The full ONS survey can be found here.