London‘s West End faces losing £10billion a year and 50,000 jobs because visitors are staying away from the city hotspot.
Strict quarantine rules combined with the fears of infection in the UK have seen overseas travellers drop out from coming to the capital.
And office staff refusing to go back to work have also seen shops and hospitality plummet to dangerous levels.
Nickie Aiken, Tory MP for Cities of London and Westminster, said as many as 50,000 people in the capital’s retail sector faced losing their jobs due to the lack of visitors.
She said the loss of international visitors had majorly impacted London’s economy.
Ms Aitken said: ‘Almost half of the £10 billion annual spend in the West End is from overseas travellers and then the lack of office workers who have not been back at their desks since March, that has a huge effect on the overall turnover of West End shops and hospitality.
‘Between about 70-80% – you’re basically looking at about 50,000 job losses retail job losses in West End retail alone.’
What a difference a day makes: The packed streets of Monday were left abandoned in just 24 hours in the West End
Ms Aiken told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: a ‘huge fall off in confidence’ regarding the perceived safety of public transport was partly behind the drop in shoppers.
She added: ‘We’ve got to get that back, we’ve got to get businesses, the Mayor of London and Government to work together to provide that confidence to get people back in.’
The doomsday-style predictions came as Edinburgh said it had seen a two million slump in visitor numbers in August.
Hospitality chiefs said the absence of 25,000 performers and the demise of ‘the after-work pint’ contributed to the fall.
Staying away: Many took part in the Eat Out to Help Out scheme (left) but by today (right) the same places were very quiet
The number of people on the streets of the Scottish capital was down to 700,000 in August compared to 2.7million in the same month last year.
The Edinburgh Hotels Association said the average occupancy was down to just 50 per cent in August – at a time when they would normally be almost full.
The average price of a hotel room was just £76 – down 52 per cent on the same period in 2019 – as prices were slashed to try to drum up business.
Association chiefs described the situation as ‘much worse than expected’.
Some roads had been shut for the weekend they were so busy but by today may of them were completely empty
City centre leaders said the many businesses are now in ‘survival mode’ following the ‘double whammy’ of the festivals cancellation and the lack of office workers.
Among the sectors hardest hit in the London economy have been the tourism industry and the arts.
London’s visitors make up 53 per cent of all inbound visitors to the UK, but travel restrictions combined with high Coronavirus cases have made it an unattractive option for travellers.
Visit Britain had predicted pre-pandemic that people from abroad using the UK tourism industry would bring in £30.3billion.
Even popular fast food giants were shunned by London visitors and tourists, despite the capital’s sunny weather
But when the pandemic hit it downgraded its total to £10.6billion.
The New West End Company has also said that the number of people visiting the area increased when non-essential retail stores reopened on June 15, but was still half of what was expected.
Experts in the group, which acts for 600 retailers and landlords in Oxford Street, Bond Street, Regent Street and Mayfair, believe there will be a £5billion drop in retail sales.
Last month MailOnline told how lost fare revenue would leave TfL needing an estimated £3.5billion for the year despite a £1.6billion government bailout in May and Sadiq Khan’s decision to increase the congestion charge by £4.50 to £15 a day. Tube and bus fare revenues were down 90% at the height of the lockdown.
London Councils have also lost out on £1.4billion thanks to lost income from council tax, business rates and charges for council services while each borough’s spending on services during lockdown has gone up.
The Greater London Authority, which is mainly funded by government grants, has also suffered a £493million from the loss of its share of tax revenue .
Only two diners could be seen at McDonald’s restaurant in the West End on the day workers were urged to go back to work
The Eat Out to Help Out scheme saw millions return to dining out as restaurants but they were in short supply today
Economists at law firm Irwin Mitchell and the Centre for Economics & Business Research estimated London businesses were losing £575million a day at the height of the lockdown.
Their findings suggest that each day at the height of the lockdown, the London hotels, restaurants and pub sector lost £54.7m a day in revenue, office work including professional services in the City lost £50m a day, financial services £50m and arts, entertainment and recreation £31.9million.
Their estimations project a £66.9bn impact to London’s GDP in lost revenue over the course of the pandemic to date, calculated according to each sector’s usual Gross Value Added.
Boris Johnson today warned there is going to be ‘more of this wretched Covid still to come’ as he convened his Cabinet and told ministers ‘bit by bit’ the UK is ‘getting back on its feet’.
The Prime Minister told his top team that ‘we know there will be more outbreaks’ but he is ‘absolutely confident’ the Government will be able to deal with them.
He also claimed that ‘huge numbers’ of people are now returning to offices and ‘quite right too’ amid fears that Professor Chris Whitty could quit over the Government’s push to persuade workers to ditch working from home.
Mr Johnson met with his Cabinet in the grand Locarno Suite at the Foreign Office – chosen because it has more space than Number 10 so that ministers can socially distance.
The opulent setting will be used for the meetings for the foreseeable future after months of Mr Johnson having to speak to ministers via Zoom.
The Prime Minister will be hoping that the meeting, which came on the morning that Parliament returned from its summer break and as thousands of pupils finally returned to schools across England, will set an example to workers across the nation.
Mr Johnson is encouraging employees to head back to their offices but it was claimed today that ministers are holding back on the drive because of fears the Chief Medical Officer could resign.
Prof Whitty is said to be hampering the Government’s efforts to get more workers back to their normal commutes and to physically return to their workplaces.
The return of the school run saw 370 traffic jams grind part of London to a halt this morning as parents took their children back to classes for the first time since lockdown – while empty Tubes and trains threw doubt on Boris Johnson’s claims that ‘huge numbers’ of workers were heading back to the office today.
Congestion levels on the roads in the capital were at 36 per cent at 8am today according to TomTom data, up from 31 per cent this time last week – which is a rise of five percentage points or 16 per cent (a sixth).
However, traffic congestion in London is still well below the average level of 67 per cent last year. Elsewhere, the figure in Birmingham was at 23 per cent at 8am, which was down from 25 per cent at the same time last week.
Meanwhile major train stations in the capital still appeared to be empty, with photographs taken during rush hour at the London terminals of Victoria, Waterloo and King’s Cross showing hardly anyone on the concourse.