Hospitality business recovery

With the hospitality industry about to reopen after 103 days of lockdown, businesses are working hard to set up their restaurants, pubs and bars in a COVID.19 safe manner whilst making sure they still deliver an experience to their consumers. Much has been written about which consumers will visit first, which areas will be hardest hit and when businesses will eventually open, at least two things are sure, every business will be working hard for years to recover from this and consumers will need a lot of reassurance in the short term to visit, but return they will.

I took part in a seminar this week with Trade Soho and shared my thoughts on what the next few years might look like for hospitality businesses. I summarised what I see the next three years looking like for businesses in this sector, based on forecasts for unemployment figures and various industry specific forecasts, including the future foodservice report by Simon Stenning, in the graphic I have used.

For me 2020 is all about survival for businesses, working hard to be around to start their recovery in 2021 and hopefully by the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 they can enter a growth phase, picking up from where they were before this pandemic.

I hope I’m wrong and that I’ve taken a too pessimistic view, only time will tell.

30th June 2020