The future of the hospitality and leisure sector came under the spotlight at an event in Bristol hosted by Evelyn Partners, the leading integrated wealth management and professional services group.

The summit was targeted at business owners and finance teams in the hospitality and leisure, and food and drink sectors.

Kelly Jones, partner and head of assurance and business services at Evelyn Partners in Bristol, and her colleagues Katherine Colledge, partner, business tax and Lynne Blakey, director, advisory consulting, considered the challenges in the sector and the actions that businesses can take to overcome them.

Meanwhile Stephen Champion and Graeme Clifford from commercial agent Christie & Co. provided a market update, with Tom Jarvie from dairy company Yeo Valley discussing sustainability within the sector. Joe Bester, of Fairtree Operational Real Estate, shared insights into operating in the current environment and lessons learned along the way. 

After Kelly Jones had outlined the challenging economic conditions facing the sector, Lynne Blakey highlighted what measures business can take to address these and improve their profitability, involving financing and cash, cost controls, sweating your assets and leveraging relationships. 

Meanwhile Katherine Colledge detailed some additional steps that hospitality and leisure businesses are taking around staff retention, business rates, tax allowances and systems and data. 

She also highlighted other issues affecting the sector including:

• Covenant breaches

• Covid-19 debt 

• Employment costs and the updated 2023 National Minimum Wage (NMW)   

• ESG/sustainability  

• Consumer trends 

“The most important thing is to have financials that you can trust,” said Lynne Blakey. 

“People have a tendency to look at the immediate and not the long-term. You need to have a deep understanding of your business model and stress test your assumptions to identify any crunch points and most importantly take actions to address these.”