Clive wrote: ↑Sat Jun 13, 2020 6:09 pm
[quote=bill post_id=643 time=<a href="tel:1592063548">1592063548</a> user_id=71]
I've become a huge fan of the social distancing thing when shopping in supermarkets.It's a pain queuing to get into the store, granted, but once you're actually in there shopping is much more enjoyable due to the fact that you can get to the stuff you want easily and there are little or no checkout queues.
This is true mate, but when I‘m doing it there’s always someone clogging the bit I need to get to. I mean who else in Dunoon is buying the halloumi or the turmeric, yet there they always are.
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Can identify with turmeric, not halloumi. Seriously though there are massive changes and challenges ahead. I worry not about recession but depression. All these changes businesses have to make and implement cost money. The only way they can offset or recover these costs is to increase prices. I can see, with reduced aircraft fleets, a reduction in global goods and services, particularly foodstuffs. So cue less choice and more local, seasonal foods, with shopping local for local produce. I shudder to think what will be left of the tourism industry, both outbound and inbound. Hotel groups such as Crieff Hydro, MacDonald Hotels, long established and successful businesses, Shearings, the impact on local areas and the supply chain, not to mention Jet2, TUI, easyJet holidays.
Folks will have less disposable income, NI may have to rise: the care home sector, currently broken will need massive cash injections to stabilise it. The backlog of NHS treatments may require a higher spend to alleviate this, the stock markets currently up and down “ more than a whore’s drawers” to quote a former fund manager friend.
All of these scenarios will take their toll however one of the biggest obstacles is people’s confidence. For weeks now we have been asked to comply, in fact conditioned to comply with unfamiliar practices. I know folks desperate to get back out and about- I’m one of them, but many others who are now too scared to contemplate this.
As for flying, I miss my job, I miss my work colleagues massively, I miss being on aircraft, however I like to board, sit back and relax, gin in hand and food whether purchased or complimentary. I’m not so sure that I want to sit masked, minimal service in a metal tube just to get from A to B then self quarantine for two weeks on return.
Yesterday would have seen us depart Glasgow for Palma by BACF. Instead cue indoors, in the rain, in Monifieth. Palma has been replaced by Sicily in August, from Manchester - if it happens. September should see us on a Western Med cruise ex Palma to Lisbon, Cadiz etc. I’m not sure what this will entail as TUI have yet to say what the revised onboard service will comprise.
Yes it will be much easier and simpler with your own property however mass market tourism will take on a completely different face, and I suspect it will take a good few years for it to bounce back to 2019 levels, if in fact it ever does.