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The other drama of the hotels closed due to the pandemic: the cost of electricity that they pay and do not consume

 

Few would have dared to predict a few months ago a scenario in which only one in ten hotels would be open in one of the quintessential Spanish tourist capitals. Benidorm is just one example of the impact of occupation crash, which is still not bottoming out (now due to new mobility restrictions). However, the option of many hoteliers to close their establishments to weather the storm – and in the absence of demand, which also does not have the help of Imserso – does not alleviate the financial situation of many. The paradox is that hotels must continue to pay for the electricity they do not use.

This has been denounced by the Hosbec hotel management association, which urges the Government to change the regulations that allow establishments to reduce the electrical power contracted with the supply companies. The problem is that the current legislation, according to Hosbec sources, it only allows a company to make a single change of the contracted power within a period of 12 months.

“This circumstance has meant that, for years, seasonal hotels have had to bear as costs an electric power that they did not use while they were closed, unfair and disproportionate issue but no government modified“The hotel employers insist. And now, in the midst of a wave of outbreaks and with hotels in a very delicate economic situation, maintaining power costs or access tolls in current conditions can in many cases be ruin.

Hosbec figures between 7,000 and 30,000 euros the extra cost that this may entail for a hotel establishment that has to keep its facilities closed. “In the area of ​​the Valencian Community, the cost that the hotel sector is going to assume for these electric tolls is around 10 million euros while no income is generated “, according to the employer.

Keep in mind that the air conditioning and lighting systems of a hotel are the ones that generate the most electricity consumption, so they require high power to guarantee an uninterrupted supply. “Keeping these powers contracted and paying for them while the hotels are closed due to a global pandemic beyond their control is a dysfunction”, in the words of Hosbec, who calls on the electricity companies an “exercise of responsibility “to support this regulatory change before the Government.

The objective is for the Executive to regulate the possibility of adapt electrical powers “according to market circumstances and without penalties for companies “.” We are sure that these issues are technically and economically feasible and that they can be regulated in such a way that companies operate in legally secure environments and that allows them not to generate more penalties and economic losses in their finances that are already so punished “, has sentenced the general secretary of Hosbec, Nuria Montes.

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