Staycations are giving us hope for hospitality’s Independence Day

COMMENT After 15 weeks of lockdown, hotel and leisure businesses such as Premier Inn has been given permission reopen their doors tomorrow. To say it’s a significant moment is an understatement. It’s one of the most important days for our industry that I can remember. Like some other hotel businesses, several Premier Inn hotels remained open during the pandemic to provide essential support to NHS front-line staff and other key workers. We were pleased to have been able to help in the national effort and it gave us an excellent opportunity to build, and finesse, new procedures for our operations in the “new normal”. From tomorrow we plan to reopen our national network of hotels and restaurants in phases. It’s a huge undertaking and we’re reopening with an enhanced hygiene standard – the Premier Inn CleanProtect promise – to help guests book and stay with confidence.  The safety standards are in line with both World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control recommendations, as well as UK government guidance. Premier Inn’s unique operating model gives us an advantage in ensuring these enhanced hygiene standards, specific staff training, and strict social distancing can be consistently enforced across our estate. The big question, though, is whether guests are ready to stay at hotels. Insight from our business in Germany, which has remained open for the past month, is giving us an early indication that they are. We have been expanding Premier Inn at pace in Germany since 2016. We see real potential for the business there and have grown the brand to almost 10,000 Premier Inn rooms (open and in our secured pipeline) across 52 hotels. At the time of writing, 19 Premier Inn hotels are currently open to guests in Germany.    Coming out of hibernation is a great moment for the hospitality industry… But we are under no illusion that it is going to be easy We reopened our German hotels on 11 May after the German government lifted restrictions to contain coronavirus across the federal republic. Tourists have been able to stay overnight since 13 May. Unsurprisingly, occupancy is below where we would expect it to be at this time of year. More positively, though, is the speed at which domestic leisure bookings have rebounded since we reopened. This is especially so in cities with strong cultural and leisure offers such as Leipzig, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin and Heidelberg. We are seeing the same “staycation” effect in the UK with forward bookings at our hotels in traditional leisure and tourist locations, such as seaside towns and around the national parks, picking up considerably following the prime minister’s announcement on 23 June. It is, of course, early days in terms of bookings in other locations across the country. Much has been said about the need for “flexibility” in responding to the pandemic. I would say it’s never been more important for hotels and Premier Inn’s flexible rates are proving particularly popular with our customers. Coming out of hibernation is a great moment for the hospitality industry. It’s a moment we have been planning for months. But we are under no illusion that it is going to be easy – hospitality businesses of all types will be operating in an intensely competitive market and we are anticipating low demand versus normal trading for some time. But the early signs do give us encouragement. And if we, as an industry, can successfully reassure guests on the safety of staying at hotels, people holiday at home in greater numbers this summer as expected, and a second wave of infections does not occur, they may stay that way. I’m hoping the 4th July will be hospitality’s Independence Day too. Mark Anderson is managing director of property and international at Whitbread