Standing Together

Sarah Kelly Director of Sales & Marketing Pullman Liverpool

I started a new role as Director of Sales & Marketing in Pullman Liverpool in August 2020, which was a very strange time to start a new Sales role in hospitality, but after having gone through redundancy for my previous role, I was so excited and happy to be back doing what I loved! In August, we had a great month mostly around leisure, and again September another great month, far better than expected before reopening, and finishing on 47% occupancy! We started to see an increase for small meetings wanting to take place in the coming months; and a lot of the business was coming in, in the month or pick up just a few days before, as people were too nervous to make plans too far in advance. However, we then get to October, and the new local restrictions are put in place, and we see a mass amount of cancellations, from both accommodation and small meetings, and pick up has now slowed right down for us, and a lot of the hospitality sector in Liverpool. We have made the decision to not yet open our restaurant after lockdown, due to our location, and being on site with ECL, ACC & M&S Bank Arena, which is still unfortunately shut!

It is heart-breaking to see what this virus is doing to our industry, but then infuriating that the government put these restrictions and local lockdowns on us, when in fact the spread is only 5% in our industry. I honestly feel that hospitality has taken the new rules, laws and restrictions in their stride. We have followed everything, and are now one of the safest places to be. I feel the media is playing a big part in the effects on hospitality, the fact that we hear about what the government will do next from social media, or in the paper is ridiculous!

We do not want another furlough scheme, we want to do our jobs, and run our businesses safely. Further lock down is the last thing we need. The worrying effects this would have on businesses not just in hospitality, but also from marketing, food suppliers, linen suppliers and much more, then not to mention the effect this will have on people’s mental health! We all understand there is a long road ahead of recovery, but we felt like in September we were on the right track, now this feels like all our hard work had gone to waste. We want to stand together as Liverpool to show we are Covid Safe and stop the scaremongering. Liverpool runs on Hospitality and Culture, and we are seeing this slowly be ruined every day!

Downtown Birmingham in Business was lucky enough to host our first ‘LIVE’ event in the city since Lockdown was imposed in March 2020, at the fabulous Park Regis Hotel.

With Social Distancing measures in place, mandatory face coverings worn and many other COVID secure measures in place, DIB knew it was the right venue to ensure attendees felt safe and secure as we began to slowly get back to business.

And DIB was lucky enough to catch up the key man at the hotel, John Angus, to handled better, but he mostly felt the communication was the key missing ingredient; “Financially the government could not have done much more for our industry. Consistency of message has been a challenge for Hospitality. “We have had to adapt the rules and, in most cases, decide upon new standards, based upon our knowledge and expertise. The issue with everyone creating their own standards is inconsistency. As an example, one unified accreditation scheme for the industry, to confirm it is COVID get his views and thoughts on the new safety measures and the government’s handling of the crisis for the hospitality sector.

Discussing how the hotel have managed with the continuous changing environment for the hospitality sector during COVID-19 pandemic John commented; “It has been a tough 6 months; our hotels went from great performance and optimism to essentially no business.

“We have had to totally re-invent and reestablish our hotels in the marketplace. Secure, would have been a simple and effective way to really give customers confidence.” Before our time with John ended, he was keen to point out that not everything has been negative. In fact, as with a number of businesses, the lost Spring/Summer of 2020 has presented opportunities to review business practices and introduce new schemes. John observed; “There are numerous positives e.g. We had a once in a lifetime opportunity to re-assess how we operate, the changes that we have made to our The biggest challenge we’ve had to face is customer confidence, the ever-changing environment has driven bookings to being extremely short term (70% of our business bookings within 7 days). Our customers cannot see a future at this stage, hence anything past the month we are in, is impossible to forecast and plan for.”

We were keen to get John’s thoughts on how he felt the UK government had handled the crisis. Whilst, acknowledging it was a difficult job for Boris, Rishi and co., John cited several key areas that he thought they have

expertise.”

working practices have made us more versatile and durable, as we re-build our business those changes will stand us in good stead. “We have also had the opportunity to really build our teams, adversity brings people closer together and we have certainly benefited from that.”

For further information about the Park Regis Birmingham visit: www.parkregisbirmingham.co.uk