Second Hospitality Hub Event

Released On 30th Aug 2022

On the 26th July,  Vice President of Yeovil Chamber Richard Howes attended the second Hospitality Hub meeting, at Lanes Hotel in West Coker. 

This was another fact-finding meeting where Yeovil Chamber and our partners had the opportunity to learn more about the hospitality industry, its recent successes and its on-going struggles. This session was an extremely informative event, with interesting and useful intelligence and insights coming from the participants. 
Shaun Whitehouse, the owner of Lanes Hotels gave us an interesting insight into a number of significant pain points, such as the on-going staff issues with lack of availability, retention, wage increase along with the post pandemic shift to other more reliable industries which contributes to the lack of availability crisis which has swept across the whole sector. The uneven increase in goods was discussed and often, seemingly random items which suddenly are not available, such as orange juice, leaving the owners to be inventive on where they source these items from. 

Energy was an obvious factor discussed by everyone and with some mentioning a 500% increase in electricity bills. With no obvious government capping as we write this, the deep concern from everyone was how tough the winter season now looks. Many of the attendees agree that there seems to be a winter recession looming. 

With the timing of this event where the whole industry seems to be struggling with increase costs, missing products, increased wages, super high energy costs that seem to be still rising, there seems to be very little good news stories to mention, however the fact that Yeovil Chamber had set up a group to try and discuss and tackle these issues was well received.

However, the bit of shining light and clear action already executed by this group was raised by Rachel Brannagan (Head of Engagement at Wessex Reserve Force & Cadets Association). Rachels seemingly quick win was for stronger engagement from local businesses to the Yeovilton airbase. We understand that Lanes Hotel are now signing the Armed Forces Covenant to show their support. They, along with other more central hospitality business will now hopefully promote their business towards the Airbase and more work is being done internally (at the airbase) to advertise this business that offer a discount for serving military personnel.