The hospitality industry has specific challenges that need appropriate expertise. Our know-how helps you achieve your international business and trade development goals. We offer you sector-specific knowledge, as well as our contacts and opportunities for networking.

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Read more about the hospitality sector:

• Background
• Current challenges
• Opportunities

Hospitality background information

The hospitality sector, nicknamed HORECA (HOtels, REstaurants, CAtering) includes various subsectors such as lodging services (hotels, resorts, motels...), beverage and food services (restaurants, bars, cafeterias...), event organisation, catering, recreation and tourism services.

While the key success factors can vary for each of the subsectors, these are also general themes. The focus of hospitality services should be upon the value (high quality for low price), uniqueness (differentiation in the menu composition or hotel design), and personnel friendliness and effectiveness. Personalized services tailored to customers needs are also highly valued.  

Current challenges in the hospitality sector

The two subcategories of the hospitality industry responded to the crisis in different ways. The food service sector including restaurants and catering was hit hard and early by the crisis, as consumers became thriftier and more price sensitive. However when the economy started recovering, discretionary spending on affordable luxury such as better quality food and eating out rose as this would not ruin budgets. This has helped the food services sector to recover and start growing again.

On the other hand, customers could not afford regular luxury products such as travel, upon which the hotels are dependent. Both companies and individuals cut down on their hotel expenses, looking for different solutions such as web-based conferences or other ways of entertainment. The hotel industry’s recovery is now underway, although it is more difficult and lengthy than for the food services industry.

The recovery has been faster in the US, where the hotel industry has already seen a significant increase in transaction activity and values. The European hotel market lags behind the USA in recovery by one year, but improvements are already visible. The transaction volume doubled in 2010 compared to 2009, reaching €6.5 billion¹. It is a significant improvement, but it is still lower than 2006 transactions. Further improvements will be encouraged in 2011 by better financing conditions to hoteliers.

Opportunities in the hospitality sector

In order to keep pace with developments in the hospitality sector, it is important to have access to actual, accurate and complete information and in-depth expertise. We will help you to address all important issues, including trends, key success factors, advancements and innovations, supply and demand development, operational and financial risks, benchmarking, as well as regulations and opportunities for funds and grants.

Some of the key opportunities and trends in the hospitality industry include:

• Unique hotel interior designs

  → Hotels around the world have started cooperating with designers that create unique decoration, amongst others including mood lighting, and digital art that can be customized according to the changing mood of customers or adjusted according to seasons or daytimes, or special events. Cheaper hotels and hostels do not want to lag behind in the unique design-trend, so they will often incorporate chalkboard walls or board with removable paint to design hotel areas according to travellers’ wishes, giving them opportunity to express themselves and have fun⁴. 

• Hotel mobile apps

  → Incorporating ICT in hotels has become inevitable. If you want to keep with the recent advances, you should think about incorporating a system that would permit guests to check in and check out by their phone, as well as to call room service and make payments. Use of mobile phones to enter rooms is also a new opportunity that will strongly appeal to guests⁴.

• Green hotels

  → Environmental consciousness has arrived to hotels as well, whilst they offer “green meetings” in their conference centres to companies. Everything ranging from equipment to packaging must be ecological and recyclable⁴.

• More relaxed hotel environment

  → Many hotels have understood that numerous clients just want to relax and enjoy the feel of a home away from home in luxury hotels. The response to this is to do away with uniforms, adopting the corporate casual dress code with friendlier approach and homier decoration⁴.

• Pet services

  → Dog hotels are an already established matter. However many pet lovers prefer being accompanied by their dogs and cats on their journeys. Some hotels respond with full doggie services, including in-room equipment for dogs, dog walking services, and dog menus⁴.

• Underground supper clubs

  → The most popular new restaurants do not necessarily belong to professional chefs. Underground supper clubs are often run by amateur chefs out of their own homes, especially in London. This year, we will see them expanding throughout Europe⁵.

• Twitter food trucks

  → A new US trend that is expected to arrive to Europe soon has appeared in 2010. "Food trucks have big competitive advantages: low investment, no rent, no air conditioning, no utilities hook-ups, no real estate taxes, no dining rooms or waitstaff, no reservationists, and marketing costs reduced to Twitter and an iPhone,"  says Baum + Whiteman. These trucks serve take-away food and use exclusively social media such as Twitter or Facebook to inform its clients about time and location of their next station. Some suggest it will soon be able to track your favourite food truck’s GPS coordinates⁵.

• Nordic invasion

  → Nordic cuisine has decided to open up to the world and introduce some of their specialities. One of the “New Nordic” restaurants has already been given the Best Restaurant in the World award by San Pellegrino. The Nordic cuisine uses ingredients such as “sky” (a yogurt/cheese recipe), cloudberries, musk ox, or rapeseed oil⁵.

• Foraging

  →A recent trend in European and American restaurants is for chefs to include wild produce. This trend is expected to grow as stressed-out urban people looking to establish contact with nature. Chefs use various herbs such as anise, wood sorrel, wild fennel and dill, picked in the surrounding forests and hills. Other ingredients include seaweed, girolles, ceps or buckthorn berries⁵.

• Single purpose restaurants

  → Restaurants designed in a certain style are no exemptions. What is new and increasingly popular is restaurants specialising in one type of food or one type of ingredient only. In the US, peanut butter eateries are growing in popularity. Also in Europe we can see this trend, with "all-includes-apples" menu in one Parisian restaurant⁴.

• Fast food breakfast revival

  → With McDonald as the leader, breakfast menus offered by fast food restaurants are nothing new. Whilst the fast food business is becoming saturated, breakfast is the new battleground with plenty of new entrants to the field. Wendy’s has decided to make a breakfast comeback, Burger King has launched a massive marketing campaign in the US, followed by Subway planning a big launch, and Domino’s pondering the odds. Moreover, hot pizza is expected to be a new item on breakfast menu as well³.

• Bartenders as artists

  → You can find Mojito or a Cosmopolitan in most good bars, but the best bars in town today are likely to offer you drinks made exclusively for you. Bartenders are reinventing themselves as artists who make “one of a kind” drinks, with more daring and provocative flavours, including home-made fruit flavoured vinegar syrups known as shrubs. The courageous ones can try cocktails with  savoury flavours based on infusion of fat (bacon, chorizo^)4. 

• Microbrew on the rise

  → More and more restaurants and bars are proud to present their own artisan spirits made in their own small-batch distilleries. These include whiskey, gin, vodka, bourbon and rye⁴.

• Coffee

  → Cafeterias are looking for new marketing strategies to attract customers for more than a cup of coffee. The crisis taught people to save money by getting up 5 minutes earlier to make their own cup of coffee at home. It is good news for producers of ready-to-use cappuccinos, frappuccinos and lattes whose sales are expected to rise. Even customers that are financially better off will spend money in the coffee industry, notably for expensive coffee machines³.

• Big chefs to take care of school canteens

  → Even though the quality of meals served in restaurants is improving, meals from school canteens usually have a less appealing reputation. This concerns both taste and nutrition. Media-renown chefs like Jamie Oliver decided to take a lead to improve quality and nutrition standards. Once this enlightenment has started, more school canteens should follow, thus increasing the demand for fresh, good quality food products. In 2011 thousands of chefs will participate in similar projects².

• Other trends to be found in the Food and FMCG sector, including
  → Use of local products
  → Expanding new tastes and products
  → Popular ingredients
  → Trends in desserts
  → Trends in veggies preparation
  → Trends in packaging and food/drink serving

1) Balekjian, C. et al. 2011. 2010 European hotel transactions. Hodges Ward Elliot, London

2) Food Channel. 2010. Top ten food trends for 2011. Online at: http://www.foodchannel.com/articles/article/top-ten-food-trends-2011/

3) Food Channel. 2011. Top ten breakfast trends in 2011. Online at: http://www.foodchannel.com/articles/article/top-ten-breakfast-trends-2011/

4) Freeman, A. et al. 2010. Andrew Freeman & Co. reveals 2011hospitality trends. Online at: http://www.hospitalityworldnetwork.com/operations/andrew-freeman-co-reveals-2011-trend-list-hospitality-9415

5) Murray, R. 2011. Eat this space. Ryanair Magazine – Issue 15 Jan. 2011. Online at: http://www.ryanairmag.com/story/eat-this-space/947/1/

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