All Things Lockdown

LOCKDOWN: Yes, that very unpopular word!

As sad as it sounds I don’t think there is anyone I know who hasn’t been affected by coronavirus in one way or another. As a business, we were severely hit by the pandemic, with both sides of our company being hard hit. (I do just want to point out that of course, I am grateful and blessed that we were only hit financially and realise how very lucky we are)

How did lockdown affect us as a company

One of our business models are HMO’s (Houses with multiple occupancy) HMO’s have long term tenants, tenants who potentially were going to be made redundant, were put on furlough, resulting in being paid only a percentage of their usual wage and tenants who were just simply not getting paid. This then of course has a massive knock-on effect on us as the landlord, we still have bills to pay and many outgoings to meet. Due to this we still have a handful of tenants in rent arrears who are now on pay back plans.

The other side of the company is serviced accommodation, these are properties which are advertised on online travel agencies such as Airbnb and Booking.com. These are the big money makers especially over peak season (March-August) as you can imagine when lockdown first started in March I was devastated, my business which I had worked tirelessly
towards was crumbling in front of me. Rather than panic, as always I looked at how I could solve the problem, we turned our short term rentals into long term rentals,
just so we could cover all costs and breakeven. We ended up housing families who were stranded in England and couldn’t get back to their home country. Even now after lockdown has been lifted we are starting to see the long term effects coronavirus has had on the hospitality
industry.

In whichever way lockdown has effected you, try to turn it into a positive maybe it’s given you the time you needed to create your business or maybe it just gave you some time to re-evaluate what’s
actually important!

If anything, please remember to shop local and support the businesses most affected, why don’t you go and check out a few of my favourites listed in the comments!

As always we stand as a team

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