2025: A Defining Year for Hospitality – Christmas Reflections

As we close out 2025, I wanted to share this Christmas edition of the newsletter – a reflection on a year that many expected to break UK hospitality, but somehow didn’t.

Rising wages, higher NICs and escalating costs created what was widely described as an “April cliff edge”. The pressure was real, the fear palpable, and the job losses significant. Yet despite everything the numbers suggested should happen, the industry neither collapsed nor walked away. Instead, it adapted, reshaped itself and, in places, continued to grow.

In the full newsletter, I look at why failures didn’t materialise at scale, how policy – rather than consumer demand – became the biggest obstacle, and how the market has decisively split between those finding a way forward and those being squeezed out. The data tells a more nuanced story than the headlines and one that matters as we head into 2026.

I also share three initiatives I’m closely involved with that give me real optimism for the future – around innovation, new ways of thinking about hospitality and investing in people and connections that will strengthen the sector for years to come.

As Christmas arrives, hospitality once again does what it always does: it serves, it hosts and it creates moments that matter. An industry that defied the spreadsheets in 2025 has every reason to believe it can keep doing so.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the full piece.

Wishing you well for the festive period and every success in the year ahead.