How have hospitality businesses bounced back?
In what ways have hospitality businesses recovered?
It’s been nearly 2 years since Covid-19 hugely impacted the world for the first time, changed all of our lives and almost every global economy around the planet, and hospitality businesses were some of the worst affected.
Though the last 12 months have been a new experience to most of us and most businesses, an unexpected number of individuals still travelled, still experienced restaurants where they could and still stayed in rentals and hotels where they could. One particular avenue of hospitality businesses that saw a sharp increase in popularity was within private rentals. Private rentals have less guest turnover and don’t require the crowded communal areas that regular hotels do, meaning they can often operate under restrictions. Often being private homes, they also many times come equipped with amenities that allow longer breaks where a customer can “work from home”.
The recovery of travel
Full recovery and back to normality by the end of 2022 is more than realistic with vaccine distribution continuing worldwide at a positive rate. We’ve already seen the mad surge in bookings which will continue well into 2022 and beyond as the backlog lowers.
To attract high booking rates, private hosts and hotels have implemented flexible cancellation policies which travellers can benefit from by being able to cancel or move their booking at the very last moment without losing a pound. Policies like these make consumers more confident to book, especially in uncertain times where restrictions may be on the horizon.
Private listings are a thing of the future
Not just a thing of the pandemic, private rentals look here to stay. Professional, private hosts worldwide should have seen a massive increase in bookings. However, keeping up this demand should be the priority. They can do this by be prepped and ready for travellers’ high expectations that they may have set in recent months. Offering similar amenities to a hotel environment is key to competing with them when it comes to bookings.
Before the busy season, hosts should take advantage of any downtime by upgrading their amenities to suit as many guests as possible. This could include upgrading to full kitchen units or bigger wardrobe spaces, as well as covid friendly technological solutions such as keyless entry. With the huge increase in work from home workers, upgrading WiFi throughout your listing to ensure high-speed connection rates, perfect for remote working.
Restaurant changes
With restaurants having to close completely in most places, they were forced into other ways to generate income such as ‘click and collect’, taking away only meals and delivery direct to customers’ homes. Many businesses outside of direct restaurants also now see delivery options as a great source of income beyond face to face transactions. For example, Crosstown Doughnuts in London deliver fresh doughnuts every single day all across the capital and beyond. Seeing smaller food options being delivered at such a regular rate is a great indicator that delivery and click and collect services are here to stay. Forced to adapt, restaurants have shown their ability to innovate in the short term in many ways that will linger and be a permanent source of income.
To keep in place and maximise these new sources of income, it’s worth investing in proper external system producers such as Slerp, who will help you put in a bespoke online takeaway ordering system your customers will come to expect, even outside pandemics.
The hospitality industry has been shown, like many other industries across the world, just how resilient it can be. This is best highlighted since the beginning of the pandemic. It’s also clearly poised to only go one-way thanks to the worldwide pent-up demand for travel, whether domestic or international.
