Kate Nicholls, CEO UK Hospitality, describes her experience of being back at The Annual Hotel Conference in Manchester.
“Nothing beats being back together, being able to network and get insights from people first-hand.
When we look ahead to 2022, the biggest trend positvity is that there's a lot of consumer demand and appetite to travel and to get back out there. We can see that coming through strongly, both in staycations and in overseas travel, customer sentiment is positive and remains strong.
What we're seeing trend wise is that customers are looking for experiences and personalisation and they’re seeking to really get the most out of their stays. At the opposite side of that, there's a very turbulent six to nine months to get through. We've got high levels of debt, which is going to cripple investment going forward. While that is being serviced, we've got high levels of inflation and crucially, we've got staff shortages, which means that despite the positive demand, we don't have sufficient staff to service that. So, matching that supply and demand issue, dealing with the positive revenues but the lower profitability because of costs is going to be a battle that will face for the next six to nine months.
When it comes to people, we need to have a COVID reset moment, so we want people to look again at the ways that they work and their operations, to make sure that we're as attractive as we can be as an employer to young people and to older returners to work and for those who have been made redundant in other sectors. At UK hospitality, we’re putting in place the training qualifications that we need to make sure that we can invest in our people. And we're working on employability charters and the hoteliers’ charter and finally looking at hospitality rising, which is a large nationwide recruitment campaign to get those who haven't talked about hospitality to come and try us as a career of choice.”
If you missed Kate’s session at The AHC in November, make sure you catch up on demand.