What challenges to hospitality businesses face? What are the main obstacles to profitability? At H&L we are passionate about providing solutions to the hospitality industry. Many companies use the word ‘solutions’ to talk about their product offer, so much so that the word ‘solution’ has become synonymous with sales goods. The literal meaning of solution is ‘a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation’. That’s why for H&L we think ‘solutions’ is the perfect word. That is what we do. With our deep knowledge and experience working in the hospitality industry we know the challenges faced by hospitality businesses. We understand how difficult it is to thrive in a highly competitive marketplace and we scour the marketplace for solutions that create profitability and success for our hospitality clients.
Whether our client is a tiny tea shop or a multi-site venue we know that that every one of our hospitality clients are driven to succeed. Our keenest desire is to help them to succeed. Every business venturer knows that, at its most simplistic, success comes down to the basic profit and loss paradigm, where profits need to exceed expenses. Of course, that’s where the problem comes in. Achieving a healthy profit is increasingly tricky for hospitality businesses. Operational costs continue to rise while fierce marketplace competition keep the cost to the consumer of goods and services relatively sticky.
As H&L travels the nation talking to hospitality businesses of all shapes and sizes we hear what you are telling us. Every hospitality business we come across focuses a lot of energy on providing an amazing experience for their customer. When investing in solutions for their business venues tend to focus their spend on the customer-facing elements. So it’s no surprise that when it comes to technology take-up, more than 90% of Australian hospitality businesses are using some form of POS … and most of these are linked to an electronic payment solution. Customers are king of course, so investing in attracting and retaining them is a good thing! It’s the infrastructure that causes the problems. What we hear are that the three biggest obstacles to profitability for venues are:
- Staffing (recruitment, retention, rising wage costs, penalty rates)
- Cost of doing business
- Standing out from the crowd
Venues sometimes feel that technologies designed to support and streamline the infrastructure are ‘like to haves’ rather than ‘must haves’. They aren’t confident the ROI will be significant enough to justify the spend. H&L has absolute confidence that our management, workforce and marketing solutions will help you to improve the way you do business and increase your venue’s profits. While we do offer modular solutions that fit the individual needs of your business we like to take a “whole of business approach”. That’s why we offer the full suite of solutions for the hospitality industry, from end-to-end. Our intuitive thinking and innovative products are why so many venues choose H&L … and why many of our clients are multi-award winners.
We have many long-standing customers who can attest to how H&L dwells comfortably on the cutting edge of technology. We constantly evolve and improve to respond the specialised needs of the hospitality industry. Take a deeper look at our website or check out H&L’s YouTube channel to see what our customers have to say about how H&L’s suite of solutions have improved their venue.