A RATHER bleak assessment of how long the global recession might last emerged this week from a hotel conference in Britain.

Speaking at Deloitte's 20th European Hotel Investment Conference, City of London economist Roger Bootle predicted that we could be in the midst of a depression, not a recession.

"The economy has fallen off a cliff since September and deflation is now a greater threat than inflation," he told delegates. "We will see three to five years of either weak or negative growth."

Marvin Rust, hospitality managing partner at Deloitte, warned that the financial meltdown was moving from sector to sector "like the Black Death", a rather hysterical analogy.

Not one to mince her words, Barbara Cassani, the former boss of low-fares airline Go and the current chairwoman of the Jurys Inn Group, the three-star hotel chain controlled by Irish financier Derek Quinlan, told her audience that the time for moaning was over.

"There are so many 'big time Charlies' out there - what did you think would happen?" she asked. "You need to shut up, quit whining and get back to business."