Beyond the recovery: HOTREC discusses the future of hospitality at the 20th European Tourism Forum
This morning, HOTREC Director General, Ms Marie Audren, had the pleasure to join the 20th edition of the European Tourism Forum.
Ms Audren participated as a speaker in the first session on ‘EU tourism industry and destinations in driving the transition’ alongside EU officials and industry partners and outlined the milestones that European hospitality will have to go through to grow more resilient to future shocks.
“The European recovery will remain a priority in the years to come”, she warned. “Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge that, in the next few years, hospitality will face many other challenges that will not wait for the recovery and will require immediate planning, investments and resource deployment”.
Ms Audren also stressed the importance of providing continued support to the sector through specific EU and national funding. The existing measures will stop at the end of 2021, but hospitality still needs all the help it can get after two disastrous years. We thus urge the European Commission to further prolong the State aid Temporary Framework until at least mid-2022.