Food & beverage
Hungry for success: Hospitality after Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has been immensely damaging for the UK’s food and beverage sector, with thousands of hospitality businesses going bust. This has led hoteliers and culinary specialists to question the structure and nature of hospitality support in the UK. Abi Millar speaks to Kate Nicholls, CEO of UKHospitality, about what the government has been doing to help an industry in crisis.
I
t is no secret that the past two years have been a desperately tough time for UK hospitality. Pubs, restaurants and hotels all struggled to stay afloat following a string of lockdowns interspersed by frequent changes in the rules.
Depending on which month it was, a venue might have been required to close by 10pm, admit guests only if they ordered a ‘substantial meal’, open outdoor areas only, limit itself to deliveries or stay entirely closed. While businesses rose to the challenge admirably, thousands lost their jobs and many businesses were unable to survive. During the first year of the pandemic, when the trading restrictions
clamped down the hardest, UK hospitality lost a staggering £80.8bn in sales. This figure, from the UKHospitality Quarterly Tracker with CGA, amounts to a 64% year-on-year drop and breaks down to a loss of £220m every day. “Parts of our sector have seen very low levels of revenue and trading since early February 2020, and we have sadly lost 10,000 businesses,” says UKHospitality CEO Kate Nicholls. “We’ve been hit first, hit hardest and hit the longest, as it will take time for international tourists and business travellers to come back and start using hospitality in any meaningful way.”
Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
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dotshock/
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