QUEBEC -- Restaurants along Place Jacques-Cartier are scrambling to get their terrasses in order before their reopening on June 22. But even offering open-air eating, it’s hard to be sure, they say: will people actually come?
The restaurateurs say it’s nothing less than Montrealers' civic duty, at least if they want to have restaurants to return to when this is all over.
"I say to all the customers in Montreal, if you want to conserve the best restaurants in Montreal, you must come to eat in the restaurants,” said Eric Luksenberg, the owner of Chez Eric.
“If you don’t come for the next three months, it’s a very bad problem.”
The Quebec government has been talking roughly along the same lines, urging Quebecers to explore their own province this summer and spend some money while they’re at it.
But they’re also putting in millions’ worth of taxpayer money to keep the tourism industry afloat, including some that will go right back to travellers in the form of discounted trip packages in Quebec’s rural regions.
Here in Montreal, however, all those incentives aren’t looking as encouraging.
“For the regions it’s a breath of fresh air and they needed it, but for Montreal, which is an international destination, we need more,” says Yves Lalumière, the president of Tourisme Montréal.
The tourism industry employs one in 10 workers in Quebec, and 80 per cent of those are based out of Montreal. People in the industry are bracing themselves for a very grim scene in a few months.
"I genuinely think we will see hotel closings, no matter what,” said Andrew Torriani, the CEO of the Montreal Ritz-Carlton.
He says the Ritz has already burned through $5 million in cash since the start of the pandemic. Without international and out-of-province travellers, it’s hard to predict when it will have the critical mass of guests it needs to reopen.
“It makes no sense to open and start to try and bring people back, and then just lose tons of money because we don't have customers in the hotel,” Torriani said.
Travel between provinces isn’t explicitly banned, in most cases, but non-essential travel is still discouraged. Lalumière says that people can’t get back into travelling soon enough for him.
"Hotels and airlines have all done their precautions, their sanitary protocol, and we are ready to welcome them,” he says. “So open the borders within Canada, and then after that let’s move on to certain countries and remove quarantine for those countries as well.”
In the meantime, business owners like Luksenberg and Torriani do have an ask for the city: they want a break on property taxes this year.
