It is a tiny dwelling made of corrugated iron near the Gerji Mebrat Hail area, Bole District. For Aster Tsegaye, a 30-year-old woman, it is home.

Working as a housekeeper in one of the hotels located on Haile Gebresellasie (Asmara) Road, Aster has been content as the pay put a roof over her head and enabled her to support extended family, including ageing parents. Like all the 107 employees at the Hotel, meals were provided at work, helping her cut down on costs.

“I consider the Hotel home,” says Aster, speaking of Holiday Hotel (no relations with the international franchise) as a source of her income for the past four years.

First opened in 1994, the Holiday Hotel Plc was incorporated with equity contributions from eight shareholders. A decade later, it was recapitalised with a 5.9 million Br, going through an expansion to upgrade to 84 rooms.

Aster was petrified to hear the city authorities had shut down the Hotel two weeks ago, unable to grasp the prospect of losing an income that had dried up abruptly.

The weeks since the Hotel's closure have been challenging; she had to rely on those close to her to meet basic needs.

“My neighbour brought me bread,” she said, wearing on her face an expression of gratitude.

So are all the employees hired by the Hotel out of their jobs.

The Holiday was one of a series of establishments authorities at the City Administration forced to close over the past few weeks. They claim these hotels were found operating with expired licenses, breached COVID-19 protocols and failed to keep accurate employee records, among other things. In the case of Holiday, the management had been issued a day's notice, considering it enough to vacate guests and move perishable goods.

It was a prescheduled wedding party set to take place in the Hotel's halls over the weekend that convinced a task force deployed by the Woreda 07 Trade Bureau of Yeka District to extend the deadline by a couple of days. The Hotel closed its doors on July 19, 2021.

City officials have also shut down Axum, located a few meters down the same road, and Kaleb and Harmony hotels farther south-east; a move that created turmoil in the service industry. Bole District officials closed 90 hotels, restaurants, and bars, and those in the Yeka District have shut down 196 businesses.

There were multiple reasons local authorities attributed for the closures: sound pollution, non-compliance with food safety rules, tax fraud, and "disrupting peace and security" are some of them, Tesfaye Shiferaw, Yeka District communications director, told Fortune.

"They'd been given a series of warnings," he said. "Businesses are inspected and closed regularly, and this is different only because it was done intensively."

He does not see the District as responsible for the loss of jobs. The businesses ought to pay severance packages to their workers should they remain closed for good, says Tesfaye.

Officials at the District are reluctant to reopen any of the businesses shut down for now; they are working to close more.

The service industry, an economic powerhouse, is estimated to employ two million people and makes up 34pc of the GDP. In a sector with extensive labour and trade links, shutting down a business has consequences that go far past proprietors. Employees such as Aster are the foremost to be affected, especially in a country with a high unemployment rate. Addis Abeba's unemployment rate stood at 19.3pc last year, two-thirds of which is comprised of women like Aster.

"I went to employment agencies and brokers spread out all over the city," Aster told Fortune. "My efforts to get a job have been in vain."

The hospitality industry's contributions to the economy usually do not go unnoticed. From priority in land provision and loan services to COVID-19 bailouts, the industry can hardly complain of a lack of attention from the government. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March last year, the service sector faced damaging disruptions. As travel, meetings and gatherings were restricted, hotel occupancy rates dropped across the board below 10pc.

A few hotels sustained themselves by letting employees go, while others took out loans. Some survived by engaging in COVID-19 management works.

With pleas from hotels and industry lobby groups representing 1,400 hotels, the government arranged for soft loans to see them through the tough days. The first round of the loans availed 3.3 billion Br; the financing lasted for four months beginning June 30, 2020, with five per cent interest to be paid within six months. The loan was expected to go to covering operational costs and payroll. The second round of loans was issued in December 2020.

Having received a permit from the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Holiday Hotel persevered by providing quarantine services and managed to push through the worst of the pandemic.

The Hotel was picked by the authorities to serve as an isolation centre, a privilege given to some hotels in the city to offset the impacts of the outbreak on the hospitality industry and out of necessity for quarantine spaces.

"The first two months were the hardest," Fekadu Abraham remembered. "We almost had 100pc occupancy after we were selected to accommodate travellers needing to quarantine."

It appears the hospitality industry is still not short on government attention – though just not in the same, salubrious way. The crackdown seems to be happening across the capital.