On the first day back at work, restaurants and cafés reported a low number of customers while hairdressers and beauticians are in high demand.

Restaurants, cafés, hairdressers, and beauticians were allowed to reopen on Friday as restrictive measures put in place to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 continue to be relaxed. The relaxation of these measures were announced last Monday.

The reopening was allowed under a set of protocols released, which operators have to follow in order to maintain social distancing and hygiene regulations.

After going around Valletta and Sliema on Friday, The Malta Independent notes that the typically empty streets have been filled with tables and chairs, all a few meters apart from each other as per Malta Tourism Authority (MTA) protocols. 

This newsroom spoke with a number of establishment managers and the general feedback was that, as expected, business is quite slow but most of them have high hopes that things will get better with time seeing that this was only the first day back. Some operators were just happy to be out of the house and back at work.

However, there were cases where operators expressed concern that the lack of business is resulting in more expenses than revenue. They explained that in order to follow the protocols set out by the MTA, they had to purchase a lot of items and it will be difficult to recover from when business is so slow.

There were also instances where customers would walk in, use their hand sanitiser and leave. Additionally, some operators noted clashes with customers who did not want to follow the required protocols and left the establishments.

On the other hand, hairdressers and beauticians seem to be working at full swing as their businesses were packed with clients, waiting to get pampered after two months of not having access to vanity services.

Some of these operators went as close to saying that it was almost business as usual, if not better, apart from the protocols that they have been instructed to follow. They explained that they have received a number of bookings which is quite reassuring for their business.

Photos and Video Alenka Falzon