TheCopenhagenPost
September 28th, 2023

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Agerskov Kro og Hotel has yet again been voted the best small hotel in Denmark (photo: Small Danish Hotels)

In today’s news round up:

• Hotels waiting for millions
• Danes are wary spenders
• Hospitals in trouble
• New study on exercise

Hotels are still waiting for millions

Yesterday, The Copenhagen Post reported that hotels and accommodations have been missing payment from the portal Booking.com for several months. Now, DR reports that it is not only Danish hosts who are having payment issues with Booking.com.

The BBC has spoken to several hosts in Scotland and England who are still out of pocket. One of them is Emma Audain, who rents out her flat in Glasgow and says she is owed some GBP 3,000 (about DKK 25,000) and has not been paid since June.

On Wednesday, the industry association Horesta announced that Booking.com will pay out the money owed to several Danish hotels and accommodations.

But that message doesn’t mean much to the affected owners of hotels and accommodation.

“We have heard the same song that things will be resolved for the last 14 days, and nothing has happened,” says chairman at Danske Hoteller, Erik Sophus Falck, to DR.

Danske Hoteller is a chain of 25 hotels spread across the country. Booking.com owes the company DKK 5,120,000.

Danes are wary spenders

According to Danske Bank’s latest ‘spending monitor’, which follows the private consumption of one million Danes, it appears that the Danes in the first two weeks of September have kept their purse strings tight, writes BT.

Consumption in general was weak, and sales in stores were 1.1 percent less than the same period last year – adjusted for inflation.

“We must state that consumers are holding on to their money and that we are experiencing a clear slowdown in consumption. The Danes actually have the money to have a higher consumption, but they choose not to. Although wages are rising and inflation has come down, people are simply worried. Therefore, they spend less money,” says Las Olsen, chief economist at Danske Bank

In the last two months, there has been a negative development in consumer confidence – the Danes’ view of the economy

Hospitals in trouble

While the Capital Region has just adopted its budget for 2024 without major savings, it looks worse in the Central Jutland Region.

New figures show that the hospitals’ treatment capacity and financial situation are facing steep challenges. The region must now examine the possibilities of a hiring freeze, a freeze on the use of temporary workers and a freeze on agreements on voluntary extra work.

The hospitals in the Central Jutland region have serious capacity challenges in almost all treatment areas. The reports expose several areas where the hospitals are unsure whether they will be able to meet the guaranteed waiting times in the future.

The alarm was sounded shortly after the regions adopted their new budgets. Several local politicians have expressed frustration that savings must be made in municipalities and regions that run the healthcare system in Denmark.

The more we exercise, the longer we lounge around

The more we engage in structured exercise training, the more we tend to cut back on daily non-exercise physical activities like riding a bike to work instead of driving, or taking the stairs instead of hopping on an elevator.

This is the conclusion reached from a meta-study from the University of Copenhagen. According to the study’s authors, this is an important consideration for anyone seeking to lose weight.

“In 67 percent of the studies, we can see that people cut back on physical activities in their daily lives as compensation for more training. This includes walking less, cycling less and taking an elevator instead of the stairs,” says Julie Marvel Mansfeldt, a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports (NEXS).

According to Mansfeldt, our tendency to be less physically active outside of exercise time is probably a mixture of physiological and psychological mechanisms within us.

“The compensation can come from simply feeling more tired after a training session at the gym. But there is probably a psychological factor, which is a kind of reward system that kicks in and makes us think we deserve to lie on the couch and skip the long walk with the dog, or take the car to the supermarket instead of cycling,” Mansfeldt explains.