Hospitality is bracing for impact

June looked like a recovery for UK hospitality.  By December, that hope had vanished.

In six months, insolvency risk has doubled. Half the sector is back to running on less than three months’ cash. The numbers resemble 2020, but the anxiety is far higher. Operators aren’t reacting to today’s trading, they’re bracing for what’s coming.

With April’s minimum wage rise ahead, there’s little resilience left. The result is unlikely to be mass closures, but something slower and more damaging: attrition. Marginal independents quietly exit, investment stalls, chains consolidate and pressure ripples through suppliers and investors.

Yet the deeper problem isn’t financial, it’s structural.

Hospitality depends on exactly the skills the modern economy now rewards most: social intelligence under pressure. And still, it’s classified and paid as “low skill.” The sector trains talent it can’t retain and then watches it leave.

Worse, it may be optimising the wrong thing.

What if great service isn’t produced by staff alone?

What if guests are co-producers, and some are simply better at it?

If that’s true, hospitality’s biggest untapped lever isn’t more training or tighter scripts, but redesigning service so guests can play their part better.

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