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Credit: Met Police
Tourists are too afraid to visit London because the level of telephone thefts rose, the head of a hotel empire warned of 2.2 billion GBP.
Greg Hegarty, the managing director of PPHE Hotels, who operates 51 locations across Europe, said that the company has increased its security expenses because travelers are increasingly concerned about high crime rates in the capital.
He said: “If I look at the South Bank of London and the Oxford Street, you can no longer wear a cell phone on the street. You now have tourists who are less and less confident in getting or going to certain areas of London.”
The topic becomes a “main concern” for leisure travelers and corporate customers who often organize events such as conferences in PPHe’s London hotels. As a result, the expenditure on security by the hotel group has roughly doubled compared to pre -pandemic levels.
Mr. Hegarty said: “I want our customers to feel safe and valued because it makes a significant difference. They want to know that they sit in a bar and put their bags down or sit in the bar and take a cell phone instead of being targeted by a gang.”
However, he warned that criminal pidemics damage the capital’s reputation as a good place for a visit or business.
Greg Hegarty, the managing director of PPHE Hotels, said
Raub and theft rates have risen in London in recent years, with mobile phone thefts of particular importance. In 2024, more than 70,000 phones were stolen in the city, compared to over 52,400 theft in 2023.
In the city of Westminster, a person reported to a person – a crime that covers the telephone snatching – in September 2021 in September 2024, rose from around six per 1,000 people to over 20 per 1,000. In addition to telephones, people also stole luxury watches from their wrists of gangs on the street or in public transport or took other valuable objects such as jewelry.
Mr. Hegarty said: “It is certainly increasing. People read [Tripadvisor posts] That means: “I walk along the Westminster Bridge and I stole my phone.”
Telephone theft has become a booming industry for black market worth around 50 million GBP per year. Many devices are suspected that they are shipped abroad after theft.
The wave of crime triggered the Metropolitan Police, which said that it had “driven up” the operations to catch telephone thieves and to put them in court.
However, Mr. Hegarty questioned how effective these efforts were. He said, “I let the police get into one of our hotels, the General Manager told me and said:” Could you give this leaflet to customers? “That means they are on their mobile phones and their watches.
“What will you do if you check in a family of five from the USA and receive such a brochure when you check in a hotel? It is not what you want.”
Mr. Hegarty said he believed that small crimes in other regions in which PPH does business was “much more examined”.
“There is a much more active surveillance elsewhere. If you go to Amsterdam, you now have a very hard attitude towards certain behaviors,” he said.
PPHe was founded in 1989 by Eli Papouchado, an Israeli real estate developer, and is one of the largest hotel companies in Europe.
A real estate portfolio of 2.2 billion GBP monitored on hotels and is best known for the Art’otel and Park Plaza brands. In 2024, the company broadcast sales of more than 440 million GBP.
Last year it opened the doors of his latest investment, a new Art’otel in Hoxton, Ost -London, 310 million GBP. The hotel is located in a specially built 27-story tower with a restaurant on the 25th floor, a luxury spa and its own art gallery with a collection with two works by Banksy.
Hoxons Art’otel offers a restaurant on the 25th floor and its own art gallery – John Nguyen/Jnvisuales
Mr. Hegarty called it a “mammoth” Pfotion, of which he hoped that he would promote tourism to the region and contribute to the local economy.
However, he warned that the recent political events had steamed his enthusiasm for business in Great Britain. Mr. Hegarty said that the company had to reduce its investment plans and reduce jobs because Rachel Reeves decides the decision to cut employers with a tax action of 25 billion GBP in their budget in October last year.
Mr. Hegarty said: “We had to react. We had to make cuts, we consolidate our corporate office, we reduce the employees in hotels – which is unhappy.” PPHE employs almost 3,000 people across Great Britain.
The Ministry of Finance insisted that higher taxes on companies are necessary to close a suspected “black hole” in the nations’ finances that were left by the former conservative government.
However, Hospitality bosses were annoyed by the way the Chancellor increased the income.
Ms. Reeves’s decision not only to increase the rate of NI contributions to the national employer insurance (NI), but also to lower the threshold on which they are paid, has a particularly affected manner due to the high number of employees with low and part-time employees who employ these companies, pubs, restaurants and hotels.
Mr. Hegarty said: “The government overlooks hospitality. We are overlooked and overwhelmed. If you go to your high street, you have cafés that cannot be opened, you have restaurant brands that have been bankrupt for years and you have close hotels.
“I think we were in the worst place where we have been a industry for decades.”
PPHE still plans to open hotels in the UK, regardless of the tax action. However, Mr. Hegarty said that the burden on increased labor costs led to the fact that it would prioritize “selected service” hotels -which is more based on technology and offers fewer amenities compared to conventional “full -service” cakes.
Mr. Hegarty said: “Only then I bring a full service hotel back to this market until I see that things improve. [Select service] Is a beautiful level of accommodation and services, but for example there will be no room service, there will be no kitchens, it will be very automated. For me, this has affected jobs in the community. “
He was disputed equally by the prospect of more tax increases in autumn. Another attack is increasingly more likely after the recent revolution of Sir Keir Starrer in winter fuel payments and a probable change in the two-child performance limit.
The Telegraph recently revealed that Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, wrote to Ms. Reeves in the spring and asked for a flood of further increase orders.
Mr. Hegarty said: “London is only less attractive. London was once one of the global financial power plants, and we leave people left to go to Amsterdam. I can now tell you that customers I lost in London actually won in Amsterdam.”
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “By strengthening our efforts, we catch more perpetrators and protect the people from the theft of their telephones in the capital. The Met also works with other agencies and the government to combat organized crime that drives this trade and asks Tech company to make them unusable.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance said: “We are an economic government, and we know the important importance of the hospitality sector for local communities and the broader economy, which is why we support them with the facilitation of corporate quotas, fell the obligation to draft a pints, protect corporate tax and protect the smallest companies from the national insurance that financed the NHS.”
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