A gutted Edinburgh restaurant has gone from fully booked to completely empty after Nicola Sturgeon issued new Christmas party guidance.
La Garrigue, a French restaurant on Jeffrey Street, took to social media on Tuesday to confirm a large number of bookings had cancelled or rescheduled due to the Omicron Covid fears.
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Their post on Instagram read: "Big party cancellations. La Garrigue have got some availability this Thursday and Friday due to the recent Government announcement. From fully booked, we got an empty restaurant this Thursday and Friday."
On Friday, the First Minister announced new guidance for Scots to defer large Christmas parities and other indoor gatherings, as these are believed to be one of the main sources of the virus spreading.
Since then, a whole host of businesses in the hospitality sector have taken to social media to voice their frustration at the increase in cancellations during their busiest time of the year.
Owner of La Garrigue, Morgan Miceli, added to their comments, saying that they have had parties of up to 25 people already cancel this week.
"We've been quite lucky to have taken some bookings since the announcement, but we've dropped in numbers. Tomorrow lunchtime I've lost around 40 customers," he said.
"Tomorrow night I had a party of 15 and a party of 25, they've both cancelled but luckily we've had people booking since then but people already started cancelling last week as well so we've been hit by it."
Speaking on the guidance announced yesterday, Morgan said that they were already on the limit of tables in the restaurant and can't possibly make any more changes.
He added: "We used to have 15 tables in the restaurant and since we reopened, we have had ten. We had screens everywhere, space between tables and we're already not working to full capacity.
"At the moment, we can't do less than that. Because people are cancelling with us, we're not going to cancel on people who want to come. For the next ten days that's the way it's going to be as we can't do less, we've already made changes to the tables and have hand sanitiser everywhere, we're doing our bit basically."
With the possibility of stricter rules being enforced in the lead up to, or after Christmas time, the hospitality sector must once again dig deep to make it through what would be one of their busiest times of the year.
