Hotel & Catering sector hit hard by first lockdown; Most bankruptcies since 2013

The first lockdown in the coronavirus pandemic was hard on the Netherlands' catering and hospitality sector. In the second quarter of 2020, 112 catering businesses and 19 hotels were declared bankrupt. That is the highest number of bankruptcies in the sector since end 2013, and the highest number of hotel bankruptcies since this figure started being tracked in 2009, Statistics Netherlands said in a report on Tuesday.

In the Dutch economy as a whole, the number of bankruptcies was well below the level of previous economic crises. The many government support packages helped keep struggling companies afloat. From the third quarter of 2020, the bankruptcies in the catering and hospitality sector started keeping pace with the rest of the economy, with few companies declared bankrupt. In all of last year, 286 companies in this sector went bankrupt - 32 more than the year before.

The number of company closures in the catering and hospitality sector increased by 12 percent in 2020, but fell by 21 percent in the first quarter of 2021.

Before the pandemic, the catering and hospitality sector accounted for 2.1 percent of the Dutch economy and one in 20 jobs in the Netherlands. After the pandemic's many lockdowns, the sector shrank to 1.3 percent of the Dutch economy in 2020. Just before the coronavirus hit the Netherlands in February last year, the sector counted 431 thousand jobs. In the first months of 2021, there were over 100 thousand fewer jobs in the sector.

As travel restrictions and restaurant closures affected this sector the most, it is not surprising that the catering and hospitality sector also made most use of coronavirus support measures. Data up to April 2021 showed that 75 percent of companies in this sector made use of one or more support schemes, while the national average for companies in all sectors is 31 percent.