Restaurants in Mumbles have been left exasperated by customers booking tables only to cancel at the last minute and leaving them in the lurch.
With the hospitality industry taking a huge hit since the coronavirus pandemic broke out across the UK more than two years ago, it was hoped that businesses and restaurants could enjoy a fruitful and profitable spring and summer in 2022 after challenging times in 2020 and 2021. However, despite Covid restrictions in Wales coming to an end in recent weeks and months, restaurants and bars are facing different types of challenges during the busy Easter holiday period.
Many businesses have complained of staff shortages in recent weeks, with some not even able to open due to a lack of people able to work for one reason or another. If that wasn’t already putting enough strain on business owners in the hospitality industry, the problem has been heightened further when they've had enough staff but not enough customers thanks to last-minute cancellations. You can keep up to date with the latest Swansea news by signing up to the local newsletter here.
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The Mermaid is a cafe bar and restaurant located in Mumbles Road in Swansea. The business has received phone calls in the past day cancelling tables - one for six people on Thursday night and one for seven people on Friday. The issue is clearly ongoing and one that is causing concern.
Some customers said testing positive for Covid was the reason they could not attend at such short notice. While that may be true, the restaurant’s manager, Terry Bishop, thinks another factor is customers not deciding if they actually want to eat at a particular restaurant until shortly before they are due to sit down for food. You can read more stories about Mumbles here.
“People are booking tables at lots of different places and then deciding which one to go to when the time comes,” he said. “People think it’s better to book rather than just walk in, and then sometimes they don’t let us know, or other times they let us know at short notice.
“It’s something we just have to deal with to be honest with you. It’s a difficult one in terms of staff as well. Bigger bookings require more staff, and it’s certainly difficult to deal with if we staff up and then bookings are cancelled because we have to make a decision to send people home in order to save money.”
According to Mr Bishop, getting the right number of staff is an issue at present even before you factor in last-minute cancellations. He added: "We could do with another five people up front in the restaurant and another three in the kitchen, and it seems to be an issue for a lot of businesses around here.”
Mr Bishop said they did accept walk-ins generally but if they had a lot of bookings they often turned people away at the door due to a lack of space. If those bookings then cancel, the business is left with empty tables that could otherwise have been filled. “Is it actually Covid or are people just saying that?" he asked. "Hopefully things will get better.”
Another restaurant less than half a mile away in Mumbles Road is Môr. Manager Hywelis Thomas-Howels is experiencing similar problems to those seen at The Mermaid, and has even introduced a ‘black book’ system where customers who cancel without a reasonable excuse are not allowed to return in future.
She told the BBC: “When you’re speaking to people on the phone and it’s half an hour before their booking and they tell you that six of them have now come down with Covid, a part of you is dying inside because it’s 7:30pm on a Saturday night and you’ve lost six covers.
“I think there is perhaps a culture of people coming to a local area, blanket-booking restaurants and then making their mind up on the evening as to where they’d like to eat with no regard for the smaller local business. It’s been really difficult, especially when every table counts, every cover counts, considering the last two years for hospitality, it’s been tough.”
Restaurants facing problems is not something which is consigned to the Mumbles area, either, but one that seems to be prevalent in tourist traps and in particular seaside resorts across Wales. Last week, the owner of a pub near Tenby in Pembrokeshire admitted that it was impossible for them to open every day because of a lack of staff, and even advertised for a chef who was “nothing flashy”.
Speaking to Wales Online, the owner said: “We are struggling to get part time or full time staff, they’re just not coming forward. And I think all the businesses in the area are finding the same thing, especially in hospitality. But I think it is across other industries as well.
“Being in this tourist area makes it more difficult as well. There are fluctuations in trade and at bank holiday weekend we get inundated. And then in two weeks time, all the tourists will have left so we don’t need so many. You can’t just keep flogging loyal staff that you have got and we have got quite a core of very loyal, hard working staff so we don’t want to finish them off.”
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