The hospitality sector has been a ‘major casualty’ of the pandemic and its lockdowns, the latest Resilience First webinar heard today. When will hospitality – pubs and clubs, concert venues, hotels, restaurants, casinos – be able to re-open, and what will they look like? Those were the questions for Darren Carter, head of security at Edwardian Hotels London and the chair of the IHSM (Institute of Hotel Security Management), and the chief exec of the trade association UK Hospitality, Kate Nicholls.
First the webinar was opened by Robert Hall of Resilience First, for Jean Devlin, a partner at the consultancy Control Risks, to give an overview. Social consumption has been the most affected sector; whether eating out, the arts or recreation. London has been particularly badly hit. Recovery hinges on vaccination and the return of international travel, and domestic travel, whether for business and leisure.
The webinar heard that domestic travel is likely to come before international – indeed, there’s a pent-up demand for it – and leisure travel before business. Jean Devlin said that the UK has been comparatively harder hit than other countries, but it’s expected that recovery will be robust for the rest of the year and beyond. She stressed how important ‘social consumption’ is for the UK economy; perhaps 20 per cent of the UK’s jobs, and 25pc of its economic activity, in normal times; that’s severely contracted.
The job losses in London have been concentrated on hospitality (Kate Nicholls later spoke of London having a ‘triple whammy’ of no international travel, no commuting and no office workers buying services). Jean Devlin concluded that there’s much to be sombre about, but there are grounds for optimism in the recovery and re-invention of the sector. That was seconded by Kate Nicholls and then Darren Carter, who stressed (as he has in pre-pandemic talks, for example at the International Security Expo at Olympia) that hospitality security as part of the hospitality service is about giving good and tailored customer service, and being ‘highly adaptable’.
He stressed how the sector had adapted to restrictions, whether in supply chains or about use of space. He said: “There’s been some great learning from this year, despite the extreme stresses. There’s a lot of positives to take forward in how we adapt and can face the near and long term future.”
As for when confidence might return; Jean Devlin expected to see more European travel opening up from the second quarter. As for longer-haul travel, that might be between countries with higher vaccination rates, making the UK a relatively attractive place. On the question of ‘long covid – how long’, she took the event through the consultancy’s ‘baseline scenario’ for the year, about the operational implications as vaccination proceeds, and possible ‘disruption triggers’.
More in the March 2021 print edition of Professional Security magazine.
The next Resilience First webinar is on Monday, February 8; after publication of a report ‘Agile resilience: lessons from Covid-19 for the ‘next normal’ in August 2020, Resilience First and the management consultancy McKinsey & Company have created a guide to improving agility in organisations of all sizes.
Photo by Mark Rowe; pub door.
