The numbers from the hospitality sector speak a clear language: things continue to go downhill.

On Monday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited the six-day congress of the trade union IG BCE (Industrial Union for Mining, Chemicals, Energy). There he emphasised the high importance of social partnership between workers, employers and politics and assured the union that he was well aware of the increasingly difficult situation of many people in the country.

In these days Merz would have done better to visit the German hospitality industry. There, without the glamorous distraction of a functionary congress, he could have seen first-hand the reality of the German economy: The interest in uplifting speeches by the Chancellor among restaurateurs, hoteliers and caterers is likely vanishingly small — business is simply too bad.

Cold shower in the holiday season

The Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis) delivered catastrophic figures for August for the entire German hospitality industry, i.e., both gastronomy and hotels: Even in the most important vacation month, restaurants, hotels, caterers and snack bars lost a real turnover volume of 3.5 per cent compared with the previous year. Nominally there was still a minus of 0.6 per cent in the overall balance. Also compared with the previous month, July, the hospitality sector lost real turnover of 1.4 per cent.

Such a poor development, of all times in the high-volume holiday months, is a fatal proof that nothing seems to be running smoothly anymore in the German economy — exactly now you would have had to cash in. Here, the until now weak year with a minus of about 4 per cent at least should have offered a small glimmer of hope. Pfft. The summer months turned into a disaster.