To feel so sorry for the hospitality industry?

[clartymare]

We just got back from a UK hotel break. Previously been and it was lovely. While it was still lovely, the service was nowhere near what it was and the place needs some TLC. Friends have reported the same from various stays they've had.

It was disappointing, but we were chatting to the manager and he was saying how so many staff are off sick or isolating, and have been over the last month or so, that they're operating on a skeleton staff and have had to make adjustments in order to cope. Breakfast is no longer hot for example, continental only. No room service. Things like that.

The staff we came across, while lovely and helpful, were obviously run off their feet. Dinner service was chaotic largely for this reason - not enough staff again.

So many guests complaining, being very rude to staff, saying you wouldn't get these problems abroad etc (I disagree on that!) and although I came away feeling disappointed because it wasn't a patch on the stays we've had there before, I also felt desperately sorry for anyone working in the industry at the moment. It just seems like, despite the opportunity to boost UK breaks, they're spread really thin whatever they do.

Yes they're all fully booked, but they need to be after having being closed for so long. I had a look on trip advisor for reviews on some of the places we stayed and loved before lockdown when I got home, out of curiosity and it seems like many places are the same at the moment.

@Bythemillpond

Biancadelrioisback

Dd manages events but more on a choose what, where and which days you do.
I don’t think she would turn up for £9 per hour. The lowest she works for is £15 per hour and can get £23 (and her own parking space) at one venue.
But she is self employed so doesn’t have things like holiday or sick pay etc.
Returning to one large event that she had worked before, they were scrabbling for staff as 15 people had been pinged and were isolating

Ah she's smart! Being self employed and having the luxury of managing her own time. I was the events manager in hotels so was forced into unmanageable shifts, back to back events with hardly any turn around time and no staff. Higher managers always just say "ah we all had to do it!" But no one recognised that they absolutely shouldn't and it's not reasonable to make other staff do this. My contract was 38 hours a week but as I say, standard week was 50. No over time, no bonus, no recognition.

Lots off issues in hospitality. Deliveries of food not arriving,customers booking large groups then no shows.
I've been isolating this week and we haven't been affected much by people being pinged.
Wages are poor and I only just got on to 10 quid an hour.
The days are10/12 little breaks and we can't see family or friends.
It always was a hard industry,covid put greater strain on everyone.
Thank you everyone who tips.We really do appreciate them.

@icedcoffees

Exactly what I said whilst on holiday. There was a pub with a lovely beer garden in a popular seaside location turning people away because they didn't have the staff. They'd soon recoup the wages with 50+ people drinking in the garden.

If you want to pay front of house staff £20 an hour, you'd need to pay qualified chefs and management even more - and you'd need to cover all the other costs on top.

Fifty people drinking maybe two pints of beer in the garden wouldn't come close to covering it - you'd need to increase costs considerably.

Well, we were paying £10 a round for 2 of us and would have had quite a few while in holiday. 50 people spending £10 an hour is £500! It's ludicrous that a pub was turning away holiday makers with money in their pockets!

How much from that 500 fo you think the pub would have left as a profit...

When they stop pinging people there will be another rise in covid cases and the government will no longer support these employees.

To retain staff they need a solid covid policy on health and safety and sick pay.

Both needed to be sorted urgently. Otherwise there’ll be a huge drop in sales and jobs

@SchrodingersImmigrant

How much from that 500 fo you think the pub would have left as a profit...

I don't know, it's been a while since my dad was a publican but it's £500 an hour they didn't make.

Well they couldn't make it if they didn't have a staff. And if they paid 20 an hour, there would be no point opening

As someone who works in the hospitality industry and who's DH also works in hospitality, thank you OP.

It's not £500 an hour they didn't make at all. It's possibly (doubtfully) £500 an hour they didn't take. Two very different things. You can take 20% vat to start. Then you have the cost of the drinks, all your overheads, staffing, breakages to cover.
Customers that think they know how to run a pub always spout the same crap. Costs are higher than ever with all the regulations we've had to deal with, and customers know less now about the details of the industry than they did before. The government have made hospitality jump through hoops, all the bounce back loans need to be paid now - loans businesses had no choice but to take through no fault of their own. It's not as simple as you think.

It makes me happy that my fellow ex-hospitality labourers have realised they don’t have to tolerate being treated like scum in awful conditions for poverty wages, and have ditched the industry. There’s a shortage of people willing to be paid fuck all for shit work with vile customers- oh well 😂

If hospitality venues offered set shifts I'm sure that they would find it much easier to fill jobs. I'm a stay at home mum currently but I would like to work, however, I can't be potentially available 7 days a week for part time pay. I thought post lockdown might be my chance to get a job but most hospitality employers want complete flexibility.

It's shit for all concerned. I am
Just appreciative of all those in hospitality and being doubly nice!

We're in Cumbria and have had a lot of the overspill from the lake district..... One of our locals isnt opening over the bank holiday weekends as he's so worried about his staff. They need a break and it's just going to be too much.

He's already had to put appeals out and signs up asking people (( tourists)) not to abuse his staff. It's a combination of a massive influx of people and not having tye staff numbers. It's such a shame that what should be a positive just cant be enjoyed.

Make the tips better, obligatory even, like they do in the US? 20% as standard?

@PomegranateQueen

If hospitality venues offered set shifts I'm sure that they would find it much easier to fill jobs. I'm a stay at home mum currently but I would like to work, however, I can't be potentially available 7 days a week for part time pay. I thought post lockdown might be my chance to get a job but most hospitality employers want complete flexibility.

I completely agree. I worked in the hospitality industry for many years before zero hours contracts existed. You got your shifts up to two weeks in advance. It's perfectly possible.

Can someone in the industry please explain why prices and supply are not raised in line with supply and demand. If you know the pub is going to be packed as England are playing on the final of the Euros for example, why can you not ensure you are fully staffed by paying higher wages and raise the price of the food and drinks?

I’m in two minds, mostly because I see such a huge gap in quality between hospitality here in the UK, and other countries. We’ve never had comparable standards imo, and Covid / Brexit have exacerbated this. When I say standards, I’m not just referring to front line waiting staff. Also to qualify of food, facilities etc. Personally I think Covid and brexit have given SOME managers an excuse to lower costs and qualify of service, and many are now exploiting this. Call centres are another example, why, 30 months in, are they still saying there are likely to be delays due to the pandemic? I feel for the customer facing staff in these situations, they’re the ones having to fight the fires.

@bp300

Can someone in the industry please explain why prices and supply are not raised in line with supply and demand. If you know the pub is going to be packed as England are playing on the final of the Euros for example, why can you not ensure you are fully staffed by paying higher wages and raise the price of the food and drinks?

Because it's really not that simple.

Where are you going to get all these extra staff from? How are you going to pay to train them beforehand? What about things like supplying their uniforms?

If you use all your regular staff, they still need their days off that week so how will you provide cover on the other days? Do you risk closing the pub and losing a days trade? Run on a skeleton staff and hope it's not busy?

You also need to think long term - people won't come to you for big matches if they know you're going to massively inflate costs on those days. They also remember the fact that you tried to charge them triple the night of the finals and won't come back even on normal days "out of principle".

You have to play the long game.

@PomegranateQueen

If hospitality venues offered set shifts I'm sure that they would find it much easier to fill jobs. I'm a stay at home mum currently but I would like to work, however, I can't be potentially available 7 days a week for part time pay. I thought post lockdown might be my chance to get a job but most hospitality employers want complete flexibility.

It often doesn't work like that.

Pubs are busier certain days and at certain times of the year. Many pubs are very weather dependent or dependent on a big match being shown.

They need staff to be flexible so that some weeks they can work five or six days to cover the busy season and know in winter they can drop to 2/3 days some weeks while it's dead.

@bp300

1. I you run the risk of alienating your regulars. Try communicating that to your market? They will tell you you’re robbing loyal customers.

1. Often in order to maximise space for football, you sacrifice food or run pre-match food or bar snacks only. But more than that, they’re not last of the big spenders. Four pints and a pork pie will not make anyone rich.

1. Not all matches are equal and not all matches are going to attract a crowd. And things do change on a knife edge because of the media. Covid threw a couple of matches, suddenly big name players are self isolating, those matches became more interesting.

1. Football has a habit of either being really great or really poor. Let’s say two hours match time, maybe 3-4 drinks and one or two beforehand. If my team lose, will I stay out? Possibly not. If my team win, will I go on a bender? Possibly so. So if a game ends and the home team have lost you run the risk of having a fully staffed pub with no punters on an outcome you can’t control.

1. It is time sensitive. I’ve worked matches and it’s hard at the start, half time and sometimes the end. You need a lot of staff in a short space of time, but physically, there’s only so many people you can put behind a bar.

1. It relies on every pub doing the same thing. They won’t. There is already enough competition.

I absolutely get what you’re saying. But, your average football punter isn’t going to spend the same as a family of four having a naice meal out, they won’t be ordering the wine, they won’t be having dessert. It is a different market…that’s hard to squeeze more out of.

I often say it’s like the difference between what I would pay to take the kids out just to get them out, and what we would pay as a family to have a day out. Happily pay for the Zoo for us all as a family, but begrudge buying lunch out when it’s just me and the kids.

The way we think about things shifts, football isn’t a ‘minted lamb chop with fondant potato and a bottle of red wine’ kind of spend. Because it’s not that kind of experience. It’s like me saying you can take your toddler to soft play in half term but you must have a dining package and your toddler has to eat smoked salmon blinis and drink Earl grey. You’d go somewhere else. It’s not that kind of experience.

If you wanted that kind of experience in football, you’d have a hospitality box in a stadium.

@PomegranateQueen
We take people on on casual contracts and ask them for flexibility, but we then guarantee their hours four weeks out so they can plan their lives.

But that said if you work in hospitality, you quite often don’t know what time you finish. I’ve worked football matches where it was due to be a 4.30 finish and at 6.30 I’m moving tables for an evening event.

Your best chance is to look at a cafe, they have more set opening times, or to ask specifically about breakfast shifts as there’s someone to hand over to. The challenge is that they’re not compatible with family life quite as easily. I would still make an application for roles though and be clear about times, I’ll forgive my team a lot if they’re good at their jobs and with students we always see a drop off/request for time off around exam period and we make it work.

The weather hasn’t helped. A week of rain and you close the beer garden, no customers, no staff needed.

I have noticed so many pubs are shut or don’t do any food both in London and another big city. It was a struggle finding somewhere in Central London on Sunday evening, then only crisps for food and they chucked us out at 9pm!!! Different to what their website said and we had rung beforehand to book. Staff shortages etc.

@bp300

Can someone in the industry please explain why prices and supply are not raised in line with supply and demand. If you know the pub is going to be packed as England are playing on the final of the Euros for example, why can you not ensure you are fully staffed by paying higher wages and raise the price of the food and drinks?

I csn clearly imagine how customers would react to this. Some tried it during football and were publicly shsmed and people were going into comments with #boycott

I will say it frankly. The biggest issues in hospitality and retail are the customers. Sorry.

We had a hotel stay this weekend where the service was pretty crap. I’d say that it is a management issue aside from anything though as the hotel had taken on concurrent weddings over the 3 days we were there and couldn’t really cope with that. The management also didn’t seem to have bothered training the teenage staff they did have. I don’t doubt the individuals were doing their best while being short staffed but I’d lay the blame at the manager for crappy training tbh rather than them being short staffed. The restaurant was full of teenagers who seemed perplexed by simple requests like can I order pudding please?, could we have an ice bucket? etc. It’s like they’d literally found some random teens and dumped them in the restaurant without telling them what to do.

Re the shifts. We slways had them week ahead. As pp said, many factors affect business. I and my friends never had an issue with lack of hours, if anything, the opposite🙄
But with the costs, no one can afford to have staff just standing ghere. Have you seen any commercials rents? It's not just residential which has risen.
No shows are a massive issue and I wholly support at least 10pp deposits.