As the hotel industry starts to emerge from the anni horribiles of the early 2020s, any upticks in average daily rate might start feeling pressure from the general price increases that in the United Kingdom at least have taken over from the pandemic’s still grisly news — well, that and havoc and accusations in Downing Street over alleged lockdown parties.
Ofgem, the U.K.’s energy regulator, said energy prices could rise for up to 80% of the population by a whopping 693 pounds sterling ($941) per year. That really is a huge sum of money.
Businesses, too, will see energy prices increase, and they are pleading with the government to retain some of the pandemic-era savings they’ve seen, such as the reduced level of value-added/sales taxes. The big call from businesses is for a reevaluation and decrease in business rates payable on square footage.
When prices increase for a business such as a hotel, there are two responses: Suck them in or pass them on.
I wrote last October about how wage increases simply are not keeping up with inflation, and how they have been eroded by COVID-19, which I realize is not an easy task for politicians to correct considering productivity and currency circulation have been poor.
I spoke of how National Health Staff — touted by everyone as heroes — were given a pay increase of 3% last July after rejecting an initial 1% increase.
Quite quickly, inflation rose to 3.1%, which effectively made NHS staff worse off.
It is an economic development that speaks worryingly of the pressures faced by many.
Another cost to increase for consumers is transportation. In London, where most people come from the suburbs into the center, consumers have had two years of almost zero commuting travel, and the U.K. has some of the most expensive train fares.
Now that U.K. workers are going back to the office, travel costs will be another noticeable slice from wages not being spent on other activities.
As of press time, inflation is 5.4%, up from 5.1% the previous month — November 2021.
Discernible income is being threatened. For our industry, the hope is that travel is one joy that customers will tuck money under the mattress for, that those who are not so affected by price increases will spend freely and that the money saved by consumers during the pandemic, which we are told is considerable, will provide a buffer.
This is a concern everywhere. My colleague Sean McCracken has written about it in regard to the U.S.
Robot Genders and Escapees
Two pieces of hotel industry robot news — which I know you eagerly await — have come to the fore in the last week or two, exactly three years since automaton news last crossed my circuitry.
The first is a robot that escaped from the Travelodge Orchard Park Cambridge, just to the north of the university city.
Making a bid for freedom from the confines of the hotel lobby was a robot vacuum cleaner, which looks like a large, portable CD player. The robot vacuum failed to turn around and clean some more at the hotel’s perimeter but continued on up the A14.
It might have gone all the way east to Bury St Edmonds along that main road, but was found the next day under a hedge.
The hotel gained some wonderful publicity from the incident, announcing the loss on social media, where hoteliers said they were not too worried about the loss, considering they thought vacuum cleaners have no natural predators, and having the public join in the fun and the search.
The second robot news is a piece of research out of Washington State University in Everett, Washington.
According to the lead researcher, hotel guests from a survey of 170 showed they reacted far better to robots with female voices than they did with those with male voices.
The reaction did not come as a surprise to researchers, who said guests are preconditioned to see hotel service as coming from women, which will seem to us to be a prehistoric notion.
It might also have to do with men not taking too kindly to being ordered around by other “men,” even if they are robotic, but that I understand is another stereotype.
Contact Terence Baker at tbaker@hotelnewsnow.com.
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