The Hospitality Industry and the 'R' Word

It’s been a while since I contributed to the Welcome Blog, therefore I thought it was time I picked up the digital pen to write a few thoughts on what has been a pretty tumultuous year for the hospitality industry.

As a supplier, Welcome have been affected by the recession. There is no hiding from this fact and I see little advantage in not admitting so; there aren’t many businesses that can claim not to have been. However, whilst times are undoubtedly hard for many businesses, the way in which the recession has affected our business and the hospitality industry in general, has been fascinating.

It took a while. For the duration of 2008, both our customers and ourselves seemed to be relatively immune to what was happening around us. Then, towards the end of January, someone flicked a switch and the commercial world as we knew it, changed.

When credit was freely available, hoteliers had the means to invest in hardware and software that met urgent business requirements. Furthermore, those that were highly profitable were in the fortunate position to also exhaust capital on the more lavish, luxury purchases.

While the building and motor trades were instantly damaged, the affects of credit being squeezed took time to filter into many industries. One of those was the hospitality sector.

At Welcome, we noticed a rapid, sudden change in the types of enquiries we were receiving. Larger hotels with established systems were happy to stick with them, regardless of whether or not they were happy with the results. The few that were on the hunt for property management or till systems were understandably cagey about their budgets and spent a lot longer making the final decision.

We didn’t mind this. We’re here to work, after all, and this presented a good challenge sales-wise. As always, our service and software features made sure we were able to put up and win the fight against the competition.

Interestingly, enquiries from the smaller end of the market increased. It seemed that B&Bs, guesthouses and inns were expecting a good 2009 and were focussing on ways to promote their hotels online. Our booking system for smaller establishments, Welcome Anywhere, benefitted from this, with its winning combination of easy-to-use web-based reservation system and commission free online booking.

And that is the crux of what has changed. Hardware sales, such as tills and PCs are the most vulnerable at the moment, simply because hotels do not require them. Most have till systems and those that don’t have all singing, all dancing touch screens and stock control software are happy to make do with their cash register. Money entering these devices is the main concern at the moment.

Encouragingly, it is evident hoteliers are still willing to invest in technology. More specifically, online technology. It is the one area worth diverting marketing budgets to. Regardless of what marketing gurus will say, print media is as near as makes no difference dead; the true value of expanding your brand and attracting new business can be found on the web.

It is therefore no wonder, then, that the Welcome Online Booking Module has continued to be our fastest growing product of the last two years. It is also the reason we’re developing a channel manager to make the process of dealing with third party agencies a far easier affair. More news on this soon.

I’ll sign off now, but end with a quote I read recently, from Casey Stengel: “There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who ask, ‘what happened?’”.

Here’s to a successful 2010 and no more mention of the ‘R’ word.

Mark Ellis 23rd September 2009

Back to blog index