The hotel industry is reflecting on a tough recent past - two years of the pandemic and an acute shortage of staff and skilled workers. At the beginning of the year, the industry had noticeably recovered, but now the next crisis is already bearing down on it. The war in Ukraine has had a number of negative effects, including soaring energy and food prices, disruptions in supply chains, high inflation, and the threat of a recession.
However, Moritz von Petersdorff-Campen, founder and CEO of SuitePad - the leading provider of in-room tablets in the hotel industry and authority in digital guest communication - sees strong opportunities for the hotel business to escape this situation with relatively minor damage this time around.
There's an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. So in times like these, new trends and ideas emerge quickly. That's what happened in the hospitality industry during the pandemic, and I feel that as a result, we are now in a stronger position overall and are also better equipped to successfully address the most recent challenges. There are many reasons to be optimistic in this situation, even though the industry is cyclical and hence, sensitive to this business cycle. Those who have not left the hospitality industry know what resilience really means. And having survived the worst crisis to date, they are likely to look forward to the recession now looming stronger from experience.
For one thing, demand: People had to give up a lot of leisure activities for a long time because of the pandemic - including vacations. Many people spent - and still spend - more time at home, for instance working in their home office. This has created an immense backlog of demand that now needs to be supplied. This, together with the impact of the 9-euro ticket, is the main driver behind the current sharp rise in leisure travel. Additionally, people are more willing than ever to spend more money on travel. This is also proven by a recent American Express study that discovered that 86% of travelers would prefer to spend the same amount or even more on travel compared to 2019. This is surprising news given the rising energy prices, high inflation, and the cyclical nature of our sector. It appears that the urge to travel is taking precedence over traditional economic trends. The industry should at least have a strong 2022 and 2023 despite the fact that this trend will almost definitely not endure. Of course, how rapidly the situation in Ukraine continues to change will depend on how the world economy as a whole does as well.
I believe the outcome is the same. Here, too, there is pent-up demand - people are eager to reconnect with one another in person. It’d doubtful that the pre-crisis level will ever be attained again in the long run. For this year and probably also next year, however, things are promising: Many conference hotels are already fully booked until well into the fall of 2022. This could at least compensate for the anticipated losses brought on by the current Ukraine and energy sector crises.
This leads us to my second point, which is about "better preparation." The entire hotel industry is currently hiring. Since recruiting staff is typically the most expensive part of the budget, many hotels have spent the past several months coming up with creative alternatives for different job processes. Here, digitization provides some quite practical solutions. This implies that labor can be used elsewhere much more efficiently. Hardly any hoteliers believe they will have to go back to the same staffing levels as before the pandemic, not even if occupancy falls back to the level of 2019. That’s because many work processes have been digitalized and streamlined without sacrificing quality or service. On the contrary, popular tools like our SuitePad tablet, for instance, help staff members with crucial upselling opportunities, among other things. In other words, the same amount of sales or perhaps more, with fewer employees. Just as hospitality has been "creative" with this challenge, we will now also approach new ones - rising costs not only for energy, food and consumables, inflation, etc. - with courage and experience to find (and go) new ways.
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