Emotional Intelligence in Hospitality Insights & Articles

Your best manager might be running on empty by 3pm and it's not because they're bad at their job. Between disconnected systems, endless admin and a job that's quietly changed shape over the last ten years, something has to give and it's usually their patience right when the team needs it most. Here's why I think this is one of the biggest unspoken problems in hospitality leadership and what actually helps.

Everyone in this industry is talking about a crisis right now and depending on who you ask, it's a completely different one. Owners blame tax and wages, staff blame being run into the ground for less real money than they made last year and guests say the service isn't what it was, despite paying more for it. I've worked all three sides of that triangle over twenty years, across the UK, New Zealand, Thailand, Hong Kong and Australia and none of them are wrong.

A booking drops into your inbox at eleven at night. Two nights, the room with the good view, a couple who sound lovely in their little message. For a second it feels great. Then comes the part nobody talks about, the quiet sum you do in your head where you work out how much of that booking you actually get to keep.

The UK's current 20% hospitality VAT rate is one of the highest hospitality VAT rates in Europe. Every pound taken over the counter carries a VAT obligation that an independent operator at three percent net margin is working significantly harder to absorb than a chain with three times the margin headroom.

The UK hospitality sector has a 52% staff turnover rate. This is not a staffing crisis. It is the bill arriving for thirty years of treating people as a cost.