Turnover at the Netherlands’ hotels, cafes and restaurants fell 4.75% in 2009 with the drinks sector hardest hit, hospitality industry association KHN said on Monday.

Total sales were down at €13.6bn, with cafes and bars booking a 7.5% fall in turnover, the KHN figures show. They were presented at the first day of the annual hospitality industry trade fair Horecava at the Rai exhibition centre in Amsterdam.
The number of weekly visits made to bars, cafes and restaurants fell by over one million to 12.8 million while the workforce fell by 25,000 to 275,000, the organisation said.
‘The end of the economic decline is now in sight,’ KHB director Lodewijk van der Grinten told the Financieele Dagblad.
This year, the sector plans to increase its profile as socially-responsible industry. Restaurants are to put greater emphasis on healthy products and bars will do more to bry to combat alcohol abuse by teenagers, Van der Grinten told the paper.