EXPLORING HOSPITALITY

Assessment 1: Presentation

Introduction

The objective of the presentation is to analyze the changing environmental forces influencing the development of the travel & tourism sector of the UK hospitality industry during COVID 19. The study defines the term hospitality & its historical context. Introduction & significance of the chosen location as a hospitality destination has been presented. A description of the size and scale of the chosen sector in this location has been done. Local, regional, or national economic effects of COVID 19 on the hospitality industry have been evaluated. The discussion has been made of the ways used by public or private hospitality enterprises in the chosen sector to survive the pandemic.

Definition & a brief historical context of hospitality

The term hospitality can be defined as the relationship between a host& a guest where the host gets the guest with goodwill that includes entertainment &reception of guests, strangers, or visitors (rdaep.com, 2015). The term evolved from the Latin word hospitalities & the French word hospice representing the relationship between the host and guest. Hospitality is referred to as the act of welcoming or entertaining strangers or guests without reward & with generous liberality. The hospitality industry evolved as a casual arrangement between weary travellers and locals looking for a safe place for resting & staying. This gave rise to lodging facilities in the 1700s. At this time, the seeds of the hospitality industry were planted and the growth was seen in the past two millennia. In the 19th century, many inns were set with bedding, resting, drinking, and food facilities (rdaep.com, 2015). “Tremont Hotel” in Boston was the first luxury hotel. In the 20th century, the hospitality industry became a part of a culture that became a huge business opportunity. Construction of hotels increased to a greater extent and competition entered into the industry.  In the 21stcentury, the hotel industry reached its height and has become what is seen below. Hotel Fairmont Makkah, as well as Burj al Arab, are some instances of it. Today, the hospitality industry is valued at more than 500 Billion dollars providing jobs for approximately 4.5 million people across the globe (rdaep.com, 2015).

Introduction & significance of the chosen location as a hospitality destination

The hospitality industry is divided into 4 segments such as food & beverage, travel & tourism, lodging, and recreation. The travel & tourism sector of the hospitality industry in the UK has been selected for this study. The travel & tourism sector is the second largest sector of the hospitality industry after the food & beverage sector. The major function of this sector is to encourage people for travelling either for leisure or for business purposes. The tourism & travel industry contributes 106 billion pounds to the economy & GDP of the UK & supports 2.6 million jobs (condorferries.co.uk, 2020). It has been estimated that by 2025 the tourism industry of the UK will be valued at over 257 billion pounds, which is around 10 percent of the total GDP. In addition, the holiday is the first reason why people visit the UK and the holiday visitor’s forms 63 percent of the total visitors. UK tourism results in 7.2 percent of GDP in the UK and London is the most visited city. It is 8 times more visited than any other places in the UK.

The UK is an important hospitality destination with having a fascinating history, rich cultural traditions, and exciting cities. Some of the most visited places of England are Stonehenge, Tower of London, The Roman Baths & Georgian City of Bath, The British Museum, York Minster & Historic Yorkshire, Chester Zoo, Lake District National Park, Canterbury Cathedral, Eden Project, and The Cotswolds (statista.co, 2020). Other than these, UK has The National Gallery, Warwick Castle, Tate Modern, and Royal Museums Greenwich add to the beauty of the UK. Transportation facilities are very strong in the UK, which facilitates the movement of people from one place to another. It offers the best scenery in the entire world, which makes it an attractive tourism destination. In addition, the culture of the UK is very vibrant having a variety of art, music, and dance. The location offers a variety of delicious food for the people, which facilitates the long stay of the visitors.

Local, regional, or national economic effects of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry

COVID 19 has touched every industry across the globe, but the hotel industry has been among the hardest hit. The economy of the UK was regionally imbalanced before the pandemic took place, which made the local economies unable to withstand the economic impacts (lse.ac.uk, 2020). Places having the highest unemployment prior to pandemic suffered the greatest rises. The full lockdown implemented to control the Covid 19 led to the increase in unemployment during the last year. Transportation was completely prohibited excluding for medical purposes. Huge dependence on ‘locked down’ fields like tourism & hospitality was more damaging for certain places & remoter areas on Britain’s west coast. Unemployment rose from 3 percent in March to 6.4 % in May which is 1.2 million to 2.7 million (lse.ac.uk, 2020).

The graph shows a decrease in the number of passengers during the year 2019 - 2020 due to the 2 lockdowns declared by the UK government. In August 2020, international passengers fell down to 36.7 percent, which was 1.9 percent in February 2020. Only 19,862 passengers traveled across the UK in April 2020, compared to 227,393 in April 2019 reflecting, a decrease of 91.3 percent. This includes motorcycles, cars, and vehicles with trailers, camper vans, caravans, and coaches (ons.gov.uk, 2020). The graph below shows the decrease in occupancy rates of the hotels in the UK during the year 2019 - 2020. The period from March 2020 to July 2020 saw the worst hit as the occupancy rates came down below 26 percent compared with 73.6 percent in all other sectors. There is no doubt that the travel & tourism industry is one of the worst hit industries of the UK. 

The graph presented above is showing the fluctuations in the turnover of travel & tourism during the year 2019 - 2020 due to the 2 lockdowns declared by the UK government. UK tourism industry lost 22 billion pounds and the overseas spending was reduced by 78 percent, which is 60 million pounds per day (bbc.com, 2020). London saw the worst hit because 85 percent of its tourist spending comes from overseas visitors. In addition, 3000000 jobs were at stake due to the same. The local economic impact can be witnessed through the small business within the industry that had to shut down their operations. A decline of 27000 staff has been witnessed in the first month of lockdown. At the national level, the industry will take upto 4 years to recover from the loss completely. The industry has been struggling to cope up with the condition during the last year (theguardian.com, 2020). In addition, increased costs of hygiene, sanitisation, and social distancing arrangements have added to the costs. In the second quarter, the regional UK tourism industry lost 30 billion pounds of revenue, which are also known as the catastrophic collapse. Sales in this industry on a national level were 4.6 billion pounds during April - June showing a loss of 29.6 billion pounds. Hospitality was one of the first industries to undergo lockdown completely and the last one to come out of it. This resulted into virtual wipe out of sales during the second quarter of the year 2020 (bighospitality.co.uk, 2020). In this situation, hospitality requires support from the Government as well as public as it begins the long road of recovery.

Public or private hospitality enterprises in the chosen sector managed to survive the pandemic

Establishing chat box competition

The UK based hospitality industry of travel and tourism has established an innovative competitive concept of engaging in messenger application through chat box attracting global customers after prolonged lockdown period of Covid-19 pandemic. As opined Beverungen et al. (2020), this will create openness in reaching maximum volumes of digital customers through messenger communication compared to other prevalent digital drive platforms. The chat box messenger will promote free flow of market data and information about the hospitality industry regarding its precautionary measures and safe services that are being practiced for the travellers. 

All the transformation of the quality hotel services are being highlighted making the hospitality industry relevant for the customers to gain better revenues even in volatile market conditions.

Showcasing strong infrastructure and administrative alignment

The government of UK has provided cementing support structure to the entire hospitality of Travel and Tourism industry by establishing supporting measures of paying the hospitality employees through Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and Statutory Sick Paid leaves to the employees affected by COVID-19 pandemic. As opined by Gelter and Puaschunder (2021), this has made the hospitality industry gain some economic strength and executed investment plans through marketing operations for overcoming COVID-19 crisis situation creating strong administrative functioning. The UK government has initiated a Pay Vat Deferred Scheme for paying the pending huge taxes of the hospitality industry during COVID-19 crisis period aiming for survival (Gov.uk, 2020). Moreover, the traveller and tourist are provided with the facility of pre-inspection through uploading the new visual of guest security and safety concerns for customers to have a safe staying experience.

Investing in PR activities

The marketing approach through the complete utilisation of the social media grounds validate better decision-making approach to invest in further PR operation for the hospitality industries. As per the views of Bezrukova et al. (2019), this is done through digital agency and strategic access granting for the customer to verify on the digital space. For instance, the UK Government has established a Business Interruption Loan Scheme to the small pub owners of The Angry Parrot to experience smooth processing of its business operation after the post COVID-19 scenario (Dailymail.co.uk,2021). The building of new websites and efficient use of the available digital content space by the UK based hospitality industry has improved their booking opportunities and better connections with the forthcoming future guests making PR activities more vigilant.

Targeting local and short distance travellers

The psychological effects of devastating COVID-19 impact will prevail and long distance travelers and tourists will feel reluctant to travel and check-in within long distance hotels in the UK. According to Scherrer et al. (2018), this will curve the marketing strategies to focus on local and short distance travellers who want to arrange business and corporate meetings. The hotels and pubs of the UK will earn good profit volumes if they persist in welcoming more local and short distance travellers in COVID-19 environments.

Conclusion

The devastating impact and crisis period of COVID-19 pandemic has executed real exploration about the overall existence and operations for survival in both negative and positive manner. The study concludes about the influence of Covid-19 in the Travel and Tourism hospitality of the UK and how the real hospitality industry in the UK executes its global performance by inviting global tourists and rendering quality services. The study concludes about four vital segments of the hospitality industry and the Tour and Tourism industry of the UK ranks second in the world. The study concludes about the government schemes or the marketing strategies of private hospitality enterprises operating in the UK.

Recommendations

Infusing new technologies

The hospitality industry of Tour and Tourism of the UK needs to infuse latest technological trends for safeguarding and protecting the travellers and guests from the COVID-19 pandemic circumstances. There will be no personal contact form of hotel services and all the quality services will be rendered through information technology performance of automated services prohibiting a manual handling approach.

Sound precautionary protocols

The UK based hospitality industry needs to engage in sound precautionary measures in and around the entirety of hotel premises by installing exhaustive sanitation facilities and hygienic protocols. This will make the customer feel satisfied and safe and the entire quality hotel services and its processing should practice human contact and maintaining social distances instructions.

References

bbc.com, (2020). About UK travel & tourism. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53921106 [Accessed on 19 February 2021]

Beverungen, D., Kundisch, D. and Wünderlich, N., (2020). Transforming into a platform provider: strategic options for industrial smart service providers. Journal of Service Management.82(157), pp.89-200. Available at:https://wiwi.uni-paderborn.de/fileadmin/dep3ls8/Dokumente/JOSM_-_Transforming_into_a_Platform_Provider.pdf

Bezrukova, T.L., Popova, E.V., Korda, N.I., Kuznetsova, T.E. and Bezrukov, B.A., (2017). Institutional traps of innovative and investment activities as an obstacle on the path to the well-balanced development of regions. In Overcoming Uncertainty of Institutional Environment as a Tool of Global Crisis Management (pp. 235-240). Springer, Cham.Available at:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anastasia_Sozinova/publication/319462268_Marketing_Tools_for_Increasing_Company%27s_Reorganization_Effectiveness/links/5a265a75a6fdcc8e866bd29e/Marketing-Tools-for-Increasing-Companys-Reorganization-Effectiveness.pdf#page=239[Accessed on 14 February, 2021]

bighospitality.co.uk, (2020). About UK hospitality industry. Available at: https://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Article/2020/07/28/Coronavirus-lockdown-leads-to-30bn-in-lost-revenue-across-hospitality-sector-during-second-quarter-of-2020 [Accessed on 19 February 2021]

condorferries.co.uk, (2020). About UK travel & tourism statistics. Available at: https://www.condorferries.co.uk/uk-tourism-statistics [Accessed on 19 February 2021]

Dailymail.co.uk,(2021),Hospitality bosses demand ALL pubs, restaurants and hotels must reopen from April and call for overhaul of Tier system to stop job losses after they 'STORMED OUT of meeting with ministers' over plans for coming out of lockdown.Available at:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9275133/Hospitality-bosses-demand-pubs-restaurants-hotels-allowed-reopen-

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Gov.uk, (2020),Financial support for businesses during coronavirus (COVID-19)Available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/financial-support-for-businesses-during-coronavirus-covid-19&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1613995773247000&usg=AOvVaw32_dnbZVwQgyzX_zrKxVaM[Accessed on 12 February, 2021]

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Scherrer, L., Tomko, M., Ranacher, P. and Weibel, R., (2018). Travelers or locals? Identifying meaningful sub-populations from human movement data in the absence of ground truth. EPJ Data Science, 7(38),, pp.1-21.Available at:https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1140/epjds/s13688-018-0147-7.pdf[Accessed on 13 February, 2021]

statista.com, (2020). About effect of Covid 19 on UK travel & tourism. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/320832/uk-enterprises-in-the-travel-agent-and-tour-operator-sector-by-employment-size-band/ [Accessed on 19 February 2021]

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theguardian.com, (2020). About UK travel & tourism. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/26/drop-in-tourism-could-wipe-22bn-from-uk-economy-says-wttc-covid-19 [Accessed on 19 February 2021]

theguardian.com, (2020). About UK travel & tourism. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/oct/27/covid-hit-uk-hotels-unlikely-to-recover-for-four-years-says-pwc [Accessed on 19 February 2021]