Hospitality Development And Vision 20:2020

The trend of the hospitality industry’s activities will give a gloomy picture due to changes in technology ICT, and the economic melt -down, causing instability in the economy. With the past years, the increase in occupancy rate, high cost of capital borrowing, high cost of production, more realistic wages in this sector of the economy, inflation and the declining value of the naira had all conspired to make Nigerian hotels expensive particularly those establishments that fall within 4 STAR and 5 STAR ratings.

However by mid-2020 the economic climate would become more settled, re-inflaction will begin to show signs of hope, this would improve the industry’s activities. The mid 2020 would also witness more subtle business activities. This would invariably reflect on the emergence of low interest rate too. The effect of this could be felt on capital borrowing from commercial banks and financial institutions.

Building cost of hotels of international standard now mean, a new ICT/Hi-tech hotel in the city centre or urban centre site costs over N2 million per room to construct even with interest rate as low as 25 per cent. Room cost at N30,000 per night for single room and N40,000 for double room would be expected to cover interest charges required by financial houses for capital borrowing.

Such financing is only possible for large hotel groups. Large hotel companies will become larger and increasing numbers of independent ASP (average spending power) hotel companies will either be swallowed or forced to join hotel marketing consortia or take a franchise to cope with this problem of global recession.

Technological changes and advancement will also bring many innovations in structural design of hotels and high-street restaurants. Advancement in technology will also be noticed in production technique as well as effective control system as a result of the introduction of hotel computer software in the day-to-day operations of hotel and catering establishments.

Flexible budgeting which many Nigerian hotels and tourism establishments fail to adopt as a working tool like overseas hotels need to be addressed.

Since budgeting is an estimation of expenditure and sources of revenue of an organisation for the realisation of its aims and objectives for a given period, usually one year, should now be a significant working tool for ensuring maximum revenue mobilisation, optional allocation and purposeful resource management. It helps make an organisation focus on its plan for a significant period. Thus, it is suggested therefore, that the greater the degree of seasonality in the hotel sector of the hospitality industry, the stronger the case for flexible rather than fixed budgets.

Communication in the bed rooms, committee rooms, conference and seminar centres, workshops, sports and press information centres and other banqueting outlets will improve with the use of modern in-house advertising on in-house television screens. Other ancillary ICT services such as, with satelite communication, disc communication, teletext fax machines and paging -would provide the businessman with adequate off-station communication links with head office and other regions as the world becomes a global village. By the last quarter of year 2020 many activities will take place at hotel foyers and lobbys, thus adequate provision should be made now. Many private entrepreneurs contemplating on going into hotel ventures development by the year 2020 should bear this in mind.

Furniture and furnishings would also become easy to clean and maintain. Customers would be offered better accommodation. House keeping staff would become skilled. Room maids will respond favourably to the appeal by management for systemised cleaning maintenance standards. At present many developments and up-grading are increasing the comfort and safety of hotel guests.

By late 2020, the industry would experience a decline in the rate of long- staying guests at higher crust hotels like the Nicon, the Shearaton, Hiltop Station, Jos, the Presidential, Port Harcourt, Le’Meridien Hotel Port Harcourt, Protea Hotel, Port Harcourt and other 4-star/5-star hotels. While there could be a surge of chance guests (over-night stay quests) at medium-size hotels and condominiums as well as ASP cost orientation establishments.

Food and drinks costs are increasing at the moment, These two operating costs would continue to carry the burden of running a hotel and catering establishment, since cash – flow problems would darken the prosperity of such hotels in the short-run.

Holidaying abroad would continue to shape and remould the palate of Nigerians. Foods from European and Asian regions will no longer play prominent roles on food menus, thus giving key functional part to our local and regional food dishes on our menu compilation and formulation. Nigerian dishes will continue to play active parts on both national and regional menus with Chinese’s foods. The 3-course traditional meal is rapidly being replaced by pub-styled lunches, in hotels, fast-food! QSR restaurants gastronomic repertoire will take centre stage. People no longer seek advice from the house sommelier on what type of wine to accompany a dish, rather there would be an increase in the consumption of cocktails, soft-drinks and house wines as beverage manufacturers systemic production of cocktail will increase. At present the sales of appetiser and operatives are dropping, causing great concern to caterers and hoteliers.

The nomadic nature of labour found in the hospitality industry will by the later part of the year 2020 change as staff will respond favourable to changes in managerial style vis-a-vis hotel owners.

Although high staff turn-over would continue to pose as bottle-neck to management, the mid 2020 will begin with a settled form of business activities.

Many hospitability establishments would require skilled and trained staff to establish higher standards in the performance of their duties so as to attract higher patronage and returns on capital invested while others built on Quick-Penny Style of hotels will nose-dive into the pits.

Casual labour would be needed by hotels, industrial caterers, fast-food outlets (QSR) motor-way caterers, and particularly events caterers, international catering companies would continue to have greater share of oilfield catering due to their reliable accessibility to obtaining huge financing from financial institutions and banks as well as the “good-brother” syndrome followed by upcoming indigenous catering outfits in the oil-fields as NNPC focuses attention on local contents.

Overseas visitors particularly Americans, Japaneses and the French would continue to choose Nigeria as an alternative holiday land in the sub-Saharan region. This trend is likely to continue into the first quarter of year 2020, due to Nigerian rich cultural heritage particularly, Rivers hospitality and cultural component from the various Local Government Areas.

As a result of high cost of eating out, families would switch over to fast-food and QSR snacks and cheaper type of leisure meals.

This means fast food outlets would continue to benefit from the economic recession as lower eating-out budgets would be the focus of many families.

Sales and marketing play a vital role in today’s hotel and tourism economy. The rapid growth and development of hotels’ sales and marketing management half resulted from a variety of influence and changes in both the industry and national economy. Top ‘crust’ hotels, condominiums and High-street restaurants have become market oriented rather than cost orientation responding to effective management sales policies.

Sales promotion plan would be set according to the nature of the company’s operations and its markets. in order to generate sufficient revenue. Promotions would be run continuously to tie-in with sales journey cycles. Many high street hotels would display a system of mass marketing. Advertising would be run in a pattern of ‘bursts’ while promotions would be used to force trading and to counter competitions in low-trading periods.

By mid 2020 less emphasis would be placed on product promotion rather than corporate marketing which stresses on the services offered to customers and guests.

Minima wrote from London

Eriye Minima