70% of nightclubs expected to go bust by the spring

 In Economy, Hospitality, News

The Government has announced that nightclubs can reopen from 1 October but nevertheless up to 70% are expected to have filed for bankruptcy by the spring.

With all of them being closed for 18 months, the associations representing the sector say that the losses are incalculable. while complaining about delays in financial support and expectations that up to 70% could go bankrupt by the spring.
On Thursday, after taking advice from specialists, the Government met to announce that it would end the forced closure of indoor bars and nightclub spaces providing they can provide a digital vaccination certificate or negative Covid-19 test.
According to Observador these measures will only come into force from 1 October. In an interview with the online news source ECO, the president of the National Association of Discotheques (ADN) José Gouveia admitted that the losses were “incalculable; at the level of a tsunami”, and that proprietors have only managed to survive by cutting their cash reserves down to the bone” and in some cases by using up “all of their personal savings”.
The same devastated landscape is painted by Ricardo Tavares, the Portuguese Association of Bars, Disco and Entertainers, who says that the losses are “huge” and that not even the government’s policy to allow bars to operate as restaurants or snack shops has softened the losses.
Nevertheless, the president of the association says that the reopening under these conditions “was more positive than expected” but adds that the authorities “persecuted” the “historic neighbourhoods of cities like never before.”
The representatives also say that the Government put them low down on its list of priorities regarding financial support and that when they did come they were late and insufficient, and add that others that had been promised remained “stuffed in the drawer”.
“We’re worried that we won’t get the funds that had already been announced such as Adaptar 2.0 which we should have got a year ago and have been forgotten as has ‘Retoma’ (Restart) which should have been paid out at the start of September” says Ricardo Tavares.