Owners of hospitality businesses respect epidemiologists, COVID-19 response teams and all measures but they demand that they also be respected and that the government find an economic solution to compensate them due to the drop in revenue, the hospitality sector said on Thursday.

Representatives of the national association of restaurant and bar owners on Thursday told an extraordinary press conference that owners of hospitality businesses were adversely affected by the new measures that were in place starting this week and that their revenue had already dropped by 70% due to the new measures and they were expecting further decline, especially due to the epidemiological measures according to which there must be four square metres per person in the facility.

No one thinks that it is going to be easy, and we are aware that it is difficult to strike a balance that would please everyone but we are also fighting for our profession and for survival, representatives said.

The head of the national association of restaurant and bar owners, Marin Medak, siad that they were not against the national COVID-19 response team because they believed the team were doing their job well, but they were asking the Prime Minister to receive them in the government and to initiate some economic solutions for stakeholders in the hospitality sector.

“We have accepted the measures introduced by the COVID-19 response team, which we have also discussed with them, because we have no choice and citizens’ health comes first. But it is not true that guests will get infected in our facilities, nor do we expect that if everyone adheres to the measures. However, this is for us also an economic ‘breakdown’, many will have to close their businesses or look for solutions in the grey area, and about 65,000 jobs in the hospitality sector are at risk,” Medak said.