As I am sure we are all painfully aware Coronavirus is a human crisis of the highest magnitude, one that is also inextricably linked with our global economic futures. Who can forget the stark reality that hundreds of thousands of people around the globe are infected and tens of thousands are dying despite the best efforts of our key workers, who are breaking themselves to try to help us all through this very dark period.

The impact to our daily lives is pretty inconsequential compared to those who have experienced Covid-19 or whose loved ones have passed as a result of this virus. What is happening around the globe is simply horrific, and the closing of our hotel, though impactful to us is, in the grand scheme of things, fairly minor in the face of a global pandemic.

As responsible business owners we are willingly taking every action necessary as we collectively try to slow the spread, and in our own small way play a part in trying to save lives and to take the pressure off our NHS.

A series of measures have been introduced by the chancellor Rishi Sunak in a bid to help businesses retain staff rather than make them redundant. Despite that the reality is stark for many hospitality businesses, with some notable casualties in the first three weeks of lockdown, resulting in the region of 250,000 staff being made redundant, with more inevitably to follow.

There’s no doubt business owners have some significant choices to make in the coming weeks and months, given that many only had enough cash reserves to operate for four weeks let alone a full three months of lockdown.

Many are already faced with a lack of cash, they owe suppliers, they have rent, mortgages, loans and wages to pay (they have to find the cash to pay furloughed staff before they can claim it back through the government scheme) and on top of that there are many who either do not qualify for government grants or are facing practical difficulties in accessing business interruption loans.

This should be the start of the main tourist season, but understandably next-to-nothing is moving, and it is unclear when we will be able to trade again. Subsequently the mood amongst those in the industry is one of despondency, anger, and pure frustration, especially as many have now realised government support measures simply are not going to save their businesses.

Tourism businesses don’t have deep pockets or huge cash reserves, but the sector does play a significant part in the UK economy, adding around £130 billion to the pot, employs in the region of 3.2 million people and generates £39 billion in tax revenue for the UK government.

Surely, it’s time the government stepped up to the plate and gave us some breathing space? After all ours is going to be a long road to recovery, inevitably because of the need to retain elements of social distancing within our businesses to prevent a second outbreak and because travel restrictions will be imposed for quite a while too both in terms of domestic markets and in terms of international inbound visitors, who will not be visiting the UK in the same numbers for some considerable time to come.

There may be a glimmer of hope in the form of staycations towards the end of this year, but it’s likely this may not come until a vaccine is readily available. For the most part we as an industry are seasonal, we earn our money between March and September, which tides us through the lean winter months. This year we didn’t even have the chance to leave the lean months behind us, which begs the question how do we survive?

Without some real support, the hospitality industry is going to fare very badly in the medium to long term, with many of its businesses suffering adversely.

The Chancellor has launched two initiatives: a £500 million Future Fund for high growth companies, helping them to access the financial support they need and Innovate UK, £750 million of funding for innovative businesses across the UK.

That’s all great but when you look at tourism and hospitality there’s simply nothing on the table. VisitBritain focuses on international markets as does VisitEngland, who no longer market to our home-grown domestic tourism base in the regions in any meaningful way.

Tourism Minister Nigel Huddleston has allocated destination management organisations (DMO’s) at risk of closing access to a small pot of funding to help them survive. More importantly he said: "We also need to act now to help the tourism sector be as strong as possible when we get through this pandemic. DMO’s will play a vital role in this recovery and this fund will support their essential work.’’

65,000 people in Cumbria rely on tourism for their livelihood, our DMO, Cumbria Tourism, is a not for profit organisation, which largely raises its funds through commercial activity or through levying membership fees, and I suspect like many businesses will have been hard hit by the wholesale closure of the sector. It receives little or no funding from the public sector in Cumbria, all of which means that it’s hands are somewhat tied and it certainly won’t be able to hit the ground running to begin to undertake any regional or national advertising campaigns. But where will that funding come from. Many of us in the sector who survive the aftermath of this won’t be in a position to financially contribute to expensive marketing campaigns, we’ll simply be too busy trying to survive.

Discussions within the industry in recent days have been centred on the fact many feel that partially reopening would in many ways be worse than the current status quo.

There is very real worry in light of Chris Whitty’s statement advising that social distancing would remain with us for at least the rest of the year. Concerns obviously revolve around the extent to which will we be allowed to open and to what extent will the population be able to travel? It doesn’t take a genius to recognise the knock-on effects if this is the case. It doesn’t just affect hospitality businesses, it impacts on other businesses within our rural communities, be they farmers, suppliers, shops, cafés, and the like.

The reality is we either open fully or we don’t open at all. I just don’t see how we can realistically operate with a significantly reduced business capacity in terms of diners and guests. Ultimately what does that mean for our staff?

As a business we certainly won’t be in a position to run our business with a full complement of staff and meet their wages bill if we have relatively few guests coming through the door. Will we as businesses therefore be able to continue to furlough members of our team we can’t utilise, and will the government meet the cost of that, or will we simply have to make them redundant?

It’s been a significant struggle to encourage people to see hospitality as a career within the UK employment market. There are significant shortages of qualified and experienced staff. Faced with the current crisis many businesses are rightly concerned that this crisis will become further exacerbated and that staff will simply walk away from an industry, which seemingly doesn’t merit the attention of government, a sector that has all too often been regarded as inferior and is certainly surplus to requirements in the current climate may well not recover from this apparent indifference.

These are all very real questions that deserve an answer especially if we are to avoid the economic and social cost of mass unemployment in our rural areas. We all really need some serious clarity from government, in particular from Nigel Huddleston, the fifth tourism minister appointed since 2017 at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). We need that so that we can all begin to tread the path towards recovery.