The UK hospitality industry is banking on a late rush of corporate bookings for smaller Christmas parties to rescue a festive season that again threatens to be overshadowed by the pandemic.
With concerns rising over Covid-19 infection rates, many companies said that festive celebrations would be more subdued than normal with staff wary of catching the virus before the Christmas holidays.
“We are not doing any big parties this year,” said Hywel Ball, UK chair of accounting group EY, which in the past has held large parties. “We used to have big London office parties with thousands [of people] but we’re not doing any of that.”
Teams at the Big Four firm will instead celebrate in smaller groups, an approach echoed by other companies contacted by the Financial Times, with responsibility for gatherings often being delegated to team leaders.
“We’re reluctant to inadvertently lay on a firm-wide super spreader event and potentially spoil people’s family Christmas,” said Ray Berg, managing partner at Osborne Clarke, the law firm. “Feedback from our people was that Christmas celebrations should be on a local team-by-team basis.”
Executives in the hospitality industry said that after a quiet start, bookings were picking up, while others expected companies to hold off until the last minute to see how infection rates developed.
Dominic Blakemore, chief executive of Compass, the world’s largest catering group, said that companies were “reluctant to fully commit to [Christmas bookings] at this point”, and were instead taking a “wait and see attitude to see how we are going to be around Christmas”.
It leaves pubs, bars and restaurants with an anxious wait to see how successful the Christmas period, christened the “golden quarter” in the hospitality industry, will be.
Their concern over the outlook for the run-up to Christmas — when many venues typically make 40 per cent more profits than in other months — is likely to be fanned by the emergence this week, in a group of south African nations, of a surge in cases of a heavily mutated coronavirus variant.
Simon Emeny, head of pub chain Fuller’s, pointed to a late surge in bookings. The trend was mirrored across a range of hospitality groups from Revolution Bars Group to D&D London, which owns upmarket restaurants such as Quaglino’s and the Coq d’Argent.
“People are waiting as long as you can but you are getting to a point where you want to secure your table,” said Rob Pitcher, the chief executive of Revolution. “Two weeks ago, we were tracking behind but this has flipped to suddenly bookings being ahead.”
While some venues are nervous about last-minute cancellations, there is agreement across the hospitality industry that lavish company-wide parties common before the coronavirus crisis are off the menu this year.
Law firm Slaughter and May cancelled its annual dinner dance in Park Lane, London, in favour of group or department-led events. Meanwhile, Lloyd’s of London, the insurance market, said that it would not host a Christmas party this year having had a big event in the summer.
“We are expecting fewer big office parties: venues that would typically have big office parties and do £300,000 a week I can’t see that happening this year,” said Phil Urban, chief executive of Mitchells & Butlers, the UK’s largest listed pub chain, who pointed to strong demand for smaller parties, especially in suburban areas.
If some venues will lose out as companies favour more modest parties, Emeny of Fuller’s said that one silver lining was that smaller groups tended to spend more per head. “Particularly the under-40s are keen to make up for lost time . . . a lot of cocktails being sold, a lot of high-quality spirits,” he said.
The shift to smaller gatherings meant that “experiences”, rather than a traditional meal, were proving popular for Christmas events, according to Ed Poland, founder of event organiser Hire Space. He pointed to the growing range of options, including digital clay pigeon shooting at a venue in the City’s Liverpool Street and Toca indoor football, which have helped people “get used to interacting again”.
Anxiety over whether customers will turn up is not the only worry for the hospitality industry — many groups face a crisis over finding the staff to serve them if they do. A combination of EU workers leaving after Brexit and uncertainty over the pandemic has left the industry with an acute shortage of staff.
The Rosewood hotel, a luxury hotel in London’s West End, said it had imposed a cap on customer numbers “so that we can ensure our luxury service standards remain at their highest”.
Des Gunewardena, the chief executive of restaurant group D&D, said that it was “a case of all hands to the pump and everybody working around the clock”.
He added that he was “calling up head office staff, friends and family, in fact everybody we can get hold of with restaurant experience to all muck in” after a recent jump in bookings.
The late flurry of bookings has given hospitality bosses greater confidence that the Christmas party season in 2022 will herald a return to pre-pandemic habits.
But some believe that the appetite for large, company-wide festive parties may never recover.
One City boss predicted that grand parties hosted in opulent surroundings were unlikely to return.
“People have taken this as an excuse to scrap the old fashioned booze-up at Christmas,” he said. “It has looked tired and worn for a while so this is a good way to quietly get rid.”
UK Christmas parties curtailed as pandemic reins in festive cheer
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