Honestly? That’s it? Hotels & Restaurants 2022
The recovery that everyone was probably hoping for in 2022 seems to be too slow. Things are certainly starting up again in many areas, but dissapointing to say the least. And, as you can see from the example of P&O Ferries, with the same reckless mistakes that are repeated over decades.
Business trips are only part of what hoteliers assess critically.
Accor CEO Sebastien Bazin sees business travel as a major challenge. The figures would show that domestic and international business travel, which accounted for 60 percent of Accor's business in 2019, remained well below pre-pandemic volumes.
The CEO also paints a bleak picture for the coming years: Accor predicts that international business travel will fall by almost 40 percent in 2023 and by 20 percent in 2024. "This could probably take forever," Bazin explained, according to Busines Traveller.
(Accor fears a permanent decline in business trips
March 01, 2022 Hotels tageskarte.io)
The war in Ukraine and air traffic, which is still far behind the capacities of 2019, are further reasons why Europe is far from being able to count on an increase in the number of guests from overseas.
In addition, businesses that are bankrupt and closed cannot recover, contrary to some politicians' assurances. Bringing the dead to life will prove to be difficult. How many there are is shown impressively using Germany as an example.
But actually the number of companies in 2020 fell sharply everywhere in the catering trade, as a look at the Statista graphic shows. Over 17,000 businesses (restaurants & hotels) had to be closed. For comparison: in 2019 there were 520, the year before even only 122.
(Mathias Brandt, data0
Unfortunately, it's the chains like MacDonalds, Starbucks and other mediocre service companies that survive and thus bring down the level of quality and diversity. Individual restaurants and bars that shaped the local character in their respective areas are the first to close and often never open again. The numbers from Statista are very frightening.
There is hardly any light at the end of the tunnel for the industry:
“In the best-case scenario, the recovery is likely to last for many years. This is shown by the experiences from the last crisis as a result of the franc shock of 2011. » The hospitality industry was not able to fully recover from this by the beginning of 2020.
(nau.ch January 2022)
When P&O Ferries then fires 800 employees without warning (some have been with the company for 22 years), it is not surprising that the entire industry is screaming and crying out for staff. The decades in which staff in hotels, restaurants and in the cruise industry were poorly paid and exploited are taking revenge here. Simply throwing staff on the street like old furniture was not an advertisement during the pandemic to make good staff curious about the professions and does not seem to make anyone apply now either.
Stephan Busch has an invaluable and diverse experience in the hospitality industry ranging from senior management positions with the most renowned hotel and resort companies to the project development - launch of operations, business development- for hotel and cruise companies in Asia, Europe, Canada and Russia.
His expertise includes not only planning, opening and operating of hotels, international golf clubs, airports, resorts and cruise ships, but also successful restructuring and repositioning of businesses during the financial crisis in Asia.
Stephan Busch earned his Master Certificate in Hospitality Management from Cornell University, USA and served many years as Academic Director / Faculty of Hospitality & Tourism at the State University for Humanities RGGU Moscow as well as the Swiss International University St. Petersburg.