A survey identifying the state of the hospitality industry in the wake of Covid-19 challenges, undertaken by hospitality software company Loaded, amongst New Zealand and Australian businesses, has produced unexpectedly optimistic results.
Loaded CEO Richard McLeod says the survey, Resilience and Readiness, which canvassed more than 5,000 hospitality professionals in Australasia, aimed to understand the health of the industry as it moves towards 2021 and the key solutions that may be required to help hospitality operators in the coming 12 months.
“Despite a super challenging year the industry is showing phenomenal resilience and optimism. Obviously, the uncertainty about the future is still creating concern but we have been amazed by the confidence being shown by many businesses.”
The survey statistics show that 59.5% of owners and managers consider the prospects for their business over the next 12 months are somewhat positive or very positive while 36.4% expect to employ more people within the next year.
In terms of the effect the pandemic has had on mental health 60.2% of owners and
managers believed their own mental health was as good as they expected or better than expected as a result of Covid-19 while 77.3% claimed the mental health effects on their team had been as good as or better than expected when initial lockdowns were put in place.
“There are positive comments about the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown such as
businesses taking the opportunity to master the technology they had in place and iron out any issues they had pre-Covid,” says McLeod.
“The space that lockdown created for strategic thinking and working through implementation of important changes is something the industry hasn’t ever experienced before and was certainly a silver lining for those who used the available time to their advantage.”
Despite the overall optimism, the constant uncertainty throughout the year and the effect this had on hospitality business owners cannot be understated, he says. “A significant number of respondents specified the constant change and uncertainty and not knowing what the future holds as being the most stressful part of operating their business in 2020.”
Just over 10% of Hospitality owners outlined that the effect on their Mental Health has been much worse than they expected, while low as a percentage that is still a large number of operators that we need to find better support systems and solutions for heading into the new year as the negative outcomes these effects may cause are still largely unknown.
The Resilience and Readiness Survey will be completed annually helping to provide the
industry with a marker to understand its health and success metrics as well as the sector’s embrace of technology to assist with productivity gain. “We see this annual survey and report becoming the most significant marker in the progress of the hospitality industry in New Zealand and Australia,” says McLeod.
To access full survey results, quotes from respondents and infographics please visit
www.loadedreports.com/survey
https://blog.loadedreports.com/blog/surprise-level-of-optimism-in-australasian-hospitality-survey
