It’s fair to say that the hospitality industry was obliterated during covid. From being forced to close its doors when the panic first set in in March 2020, followed by many months of open and shut uncertainty, the industry is probably facing a degree of more consistent certainty for the first time in a number of years.
There are various challenges that need to be overcome before the industry is back to its former glory. Enlisting the support of an experienced marketing consultancy such as Premier Cru Hotels that specializes in the hotel industry will give an hotel brand a definite advantage over competitors who attempt to go it alone.
What are the challenges that need overcoming?
Client malaise
It is probably fair to say that since the stay at home mandates of 2020/21, a certain lethargy has descended over people when it comes to eating out and. Even when the sector was able to fully open up, 2022 reported the fastest decline in output of any UK sector, with pubs, hotels and restaurants closing left, right and centre. The soaring costs of utility bills, interest rates and rising inflation added to the pressure on people’s wallets. When budgets are tight, the first thing to fall by the wayside is going out or weekend breaks in beautiful hotels.
Rising costs
As well as its customer base experiencing rising costs, so did the industry itself. While the government had provided some cushioning for household energy bills, businesses were left floundering, with bills rising sometimes by tens of thousands of pounds. This alone led to the closure of hundreds of businesses who simply couldn’t make staying open a viable option.
Equally, inflation dictated that prices had to rise in line with costs, making an already expensive pastime even further beyond the wallets of households who were already struggling.
Staff shortages
A massive exodus in available labour due to Brexit had already put pressure on the industry pre-covid and created a massive shortage of skills. Finding the right quality of staff and meeting expectations around pay grades simply added to the already overwhelming burden of running a hotel or restaurant.
But not all is doom and gloom. The sheer resilience of human nature ensures that green shoots are forcing their way through the doom and gloom, restoring a tentative economic recovery which typically encourages a resurgence in travel and tourism, and simply popping out once a week to your favourite local restaurant. As that confidence grows, the pent up demand will feed into an industry starved of growth and optimism, which will lead to an increase in hotel and restaurant bookings.
Growing confidence in the business travel sector
Additionally, business travel is making a slow and more considered comeback. While covid forced everyone behind a screen, the hunger for face to face meetings is changing in nature. Video conferencing and virtual meetings is the norm these days, and the chances of that changing back to the pre-covid norm is highly unlikely.
In fact, studies highlighted how bookings through accommodation sites such as AirBnB had increased in length, illustrating a growing trends towards people roaming th world with their laptops, taking their work with them, rather than going to the places that their work send them. Many companies have picked up on this trend, realizing that they can tap into a much wider geographical pool of talent without compromising on the level productive activity.
The hospitality industry needs to take note of these paradoxical changing trends in the business world. Workers may be more tethered to their laptops, but less tethered to the office, which makes for a roaming population that is on the market for quality, comfortable rental periods of varying length. This is where the growth is going to come from.
