Show us the way out of this
As well as being a hotel owner, I also run a consultancy business, so I am used to providing advice across a range of hospitality operators.
Much of the support and advice I give to consultancy clients is driven by core activities that I have been carrying out as a hotel operator for many years, although adapted over time as the market and circumstances change. Activity such as, developing the budget with your team so that you get buy-in, agreeing objectives so that the organisation can recognise what success looks like and incentivising employees to achieve above budgeted performance.
Some of my clients are new to the sector or have relied on ineffective ‘managers’ within the business, while others have just become complacent or bored. This is a situation that can be changed if the will is there and is understandable that challenges often exist within the business when owners have had no external advice in the past.
However, as the nightmare of this pandemic roles on I am struck by the apparent absence of some of these management principles within Government.
It is neither understandable nor forgivable that the massive machinery of Government seems incapable of using the basic rules of management like communication and business planning. The whole hospitality sector is now beholden to the politicians because of the draconian restrictions they have imposed since March last year and we are desperate to know what comes next.
We were told on a webinar last week by Kate Nicholls, the head of UK Hospitality, that following meetings with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the earliest that hotels will move from the current lockdown will be 1st April (Boris clearly wanted a date he feels empathy with) and could be as late as after Easter.
We were told that we will definitely not be open again on the 15th February when there is an informal review and that no further financial announcements of support will be made until the Budget on March 3rd.
Kate and UKH have done a fantastic job in supporting hospitality during the pandemic and thank goodness that she has the ear of Government and can pass on these snippets of information. However, where is the Government Business Plan for an industry that used to provide £72bn of revenue for the country and directly employed 3.2M people, which is now on its knees?
Hospitality business owners up and down the country are currently weighing up the grim ledger of taking on even more debt to survive (if they can get it) versus the release valve of pent-up demand and solvency when restrictions are eased. We are all asking ourselves how long this can go on and it is incredible that we are being given these crumbs of information from our hard-working industry body rather than being treated like adults by our Government.
I know many businesses that are deciding, right now, whether to throw the keys back to the bank because they do not know how long this is going to go on and what reopening (if they can survive that long) will look like.
We are told that 14M of the most vulnerable of the population will have had the vaccine by mid-February and this means that 88% of the cohorts most likely to die are then protected. If protection for the last to be immunised in the group takes 14 days, why on earth can’t we open from early March, albeit with reasonable restrictions in place?
When are weddings and functions going to be allowed back and in what numbers? What are going to be the rules for conferences, and can we expect to see external events like festivals this summer?
These are all drivers of demand that we need to plan for in our projected revenues, staffing structure and marketing plans.
Opening up leisure travel, the rule of six and events for up to 30 people gives businesses the opportunity to break even and start to repair their trashed balance sheets.
We are told the way out of this is the vaccine, but we are being given no information directly by Government that allows us the carry out the basic business planning for recovery or, in the worst-case, survival.
The Government is an enormous beast with huge resources and currently holds all the cards. Enough of the slogans now. Give business some indication of the route out of the enforced closure and we will plan our business accordingly. We must be treated like business professionals not captives that have developed Stockholm syndrome.
We can handle tough news (God knows we have got used to it) and we can adapt, but knowledge is power and at the moment it feels like we are mushrooms being left in the dark.
Of course, if Government need some advice on these basic business principles, I am always available to help…