Thousands of business have been left reeling by a dramatic drop in trade in the run-up to Christmas, with concerns about the Omicron variant of Covid-19 prompting consumers to cancel bookings or stay away. The work-from-home guidance introduced last week under plan B measures in England has left city centres depopulated. Some business owners blamed the falloff on mixed messages from the government, after the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, advised against socialising but venues were allowed to stay open. Here are some of the areas of the economy that have been hardest hit: Restaurants and pubs A week ago, the Parkers Arms, a countryside gastropub near Clitheroe in Lancashire, was fully booked for Thursday’s lunchtime sitting. Just 11 out of 50 continued with their bookings after the warnings about socialising, said landlady Stosie Madi, while more than half of weekend bookings are also now cancelled. “I’ve had people wanting deposits back and I’ve had to dig my heels in,” she said. Madi is far from alone. According to UK Hospitality, which represents pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants, trade is already down by one-third and the industry is expecting a further 22% drop in bookings for December, at a cost of £4bn. Business owners like Madi are facing an uncertain future without government support. “We’ve still got a backlog of rent debt, we’ve invested in the food, we’ve got suppliers and staff to pay, astronomical winter costs with heating and energy,” she said. Madi criticised the government for issuing advice that has made people wary of socialising but failing to offer businesses financial support to cushion the resulting blow to trade. “I’ve never know such a bunch of cowards, making statements like that, hanging us out to dry and then leaving us crumbling. What on earth do they expect us to do? How many knocks are we supposed to take?” James Chiavarini took over the Il Portico restaurant in South Kensington, London, that was started by his family in the 1960s, and runs its sister venue, the wine bar Pino. “It [trade] has been 80% or 90% on some days. Thirty seven people have cancelled for tonight, out of 80 covers. Next door, at our wine bar, we’re down to 1 table that hasn’t cancelled, out of 60. It’s been annihilated,” he said. “If the industry suffers, a lot of people will end up on universal credit. The question in January is how many redundancies will have to be made. Hopefully none but that’s up to Mr [Rushi] Sunak really.” Hairdressers Hair salons around the country have also spoken of facing a wave of cancellations during a period that is normally their busiest. “We’ve had a lot of cancellations, about 20 alone in the run-up to Christmas. It is what it is, people are just wary of Covid,” said Aidan Garlington, who runs a unisex salon in Bristol. Some said they thought most were due to people testing positive or having to self-isolate, but the cancellation of events such as Christmas parties was also having a knock-on effect. “We’ve had something ridiculous like seven cancellations in one day,” said Georgia Grealey, a technician at c in Birmingham. “We’ve got quite a lot of gaps now up to Christmas and I think everyone is quite concerned.” Uncertainty and confusion around Omicron was one of the main factors behind decisions to cancel, she said. “We’ve gone from being fully booked to having a chance to sit down throughout the day, which in December … feels weird.” Hair salons have faced multiple closures throughout the pandemic, with this year’s festive period seen as key time to boost profit after a year of losses, and without any government support businesses are wary about the future. Live performance Venues for gigs and concerts have suffered a “catastrophic” 23% drop in attendance since the plan B announcement, with many fearing they will never reopen, according to the Music Venues Trust (MVT). The charity conducted a 24-hour survey of grassroots music venues and found 140,000 “no shows” from ticket holders resulting in a 27% decline in gross income. Mark Davyd, its chief executive, said: “It feels like we are back exactly where we were in March 2020, when confusing government messaging created a ‘stealth lockdown’ – venues apparently able to open but in reality haemorrhaging money at a rate that will inevitably result in permanent closures unless the government acts quickly to prevent it.” The survey also revealed that 61% of venues had cancelled at least one gig in the past week. In Cardiff, promoters have postponed until June next year gigs headlined by Stereophonics and Tom Jones as a direct result of Omicron. On social media there is evidence of gig tickets being sold at a fraction of the original cost by people not wanting to go because of the Covid risk, but also realising they cannot get a refund. It is a similar story for the UK’s theatre industry at a crucial time of year. It is the money generated from the annual pantomime that allows regional theatres to take more risks with other productions during the year. One big Omicron panto casualty is Aladdin at the Brighton Centre which was due to star Anita Dobson. It has been postponed for a year. The entertainment union Bectu said there had been a wave of theatre cancellations and it would again be freelance workers – many of whom were excluded from support earlier in the pandemic – who suffered most. Philippa Childs, head of Bectu, said: “This started as a public health crisis but it could quickly become a jobs crisis as well.”