When you look beyond misleading headlines about extending opening hours, the proposals to reform licensing can actually create a system that works better for hospitality.

It was incredibly frustrating to read reports suggesting that longer opening hours would solve the challenges facing our sector, especially when that was never the intention or remit of the Licensing Taskforce.

The taskforce, chaired by Greene King chief executive Nick Mackenzie, and joined by industry leading bodies like UKHospitality, was the culmination of many years of campaigning and determination to deliver reform and move away from rules that stifle innovation and delay investment.

The proposals are neither radical or a silver bullet to solve our cost challenges, but they are practical and offer a real opportunity to streamline processes, reduce duplication and create a more consistent framework that actually works for operators. 

A new national licensing policy framework to end the postcode lottery, an amnesty on unnecessary legacy conditions, more temporary event notices for special occasions, an end to newspaper advertising requirements, economic growth as a licensing condition and more. 

These are all small, pragmatic reforms that I urge the sector to get behind. If we don’t, it will cede the ground to our critics to dominate the debate and try to impose costly, unnecessary licensing conditions. 

We have already successfully argued against those wanting to increase licensing fees, or include health-related issues as new licensing conditions – both of which would add red tape, costs and complexity into the system. Many of us that lived through licensing reform in the early 2000s can agree that these are issues we want to avoid. 

I completely understand the frustration from operators about how these reforms were first announced. For so many reasons, enabling longer opening hours are not even close to being the answer. 

I’ve worked across licensing issues for decades and I’m passionate about it. I’ve heard from countless operators about the challenges, and opening hours are not at the top of the complaints list. 

In both my role as chair of UKHospitality and chair of the Institute of Licensing, I have heard several examples of how the system could be improved. These reforms deliver many of those suggestions. 

So, let’s back these reforms in this call for evidence and deliver a more responsive licensing system that can help hospitality do what it does best: bring people together and create places where communities thrive.

But to do that, we need to reduce the tax burden facing our sector. Licensing alone cannot deliver the changes we need. Our #TaxedOut campaign continues to put significant pressure on the government ahead of the Budget to lower business rates, fix national insurance contributions and cut VAT. 

That campaign has been so effective so far because of the authentic business voices that have contributed to the campaign and brought to life the challenges they face, and they real-life impact. 

We know hospitality is a growth engine – it’s one of the UK’s largest employers, a huge contributor to the country’s economy and a cornerstone of our cultural and social lives. Licensing reform can play a part in delivering that potential, but it needs genuine action to reduce our headline costs if it is to deliver its full potential. 

We will continue to champion the sector and be the leading voice demanding this change, all while supporting operators through practical advice and guidance to navigate the various legislative changes coming down the tracks.

Licensing reform should be the starting gun for action to help our sector and it should continue at the Budget with the government lowering business rates, fixing national insurance contributions, and cutting VAT.

As the clocks go back and the days grow shorter, we enter what is arguably one of the most exciting and rewarding times to work in hospitality. The winter season often brings with it a strong sense of teamwork and camaraderie, and the air is filled with a festive buzz, as people come together to celebrate and make memories.

But while this time of year brings plenty of positives, it also comes with added pressure – and at the Licensed Trade Charity (LTC), we see this seasonal shift reflected in real time. In October 2024, calls to our free 24-hour helpline spiked to 445 – a 43% increase from 252 in September. Over the final quarter of the year, we received nearly 1,300 calls, compared with 740 in the third quarter – a rise of almost 75%.

Autumn and winter bring a perfect storm of pressures. The colder, darker months can impact mood and motivation, and seasonal illnesses are common and spread rapidly in hospitality. At the same time, many venues are operating with reduced teams due to rising costs, including staffing, energy bills, and supply chain inflation. It’s no surprise that when pubs and bars get busier in the run-up to Christmas, staff feel the pinch more than ever.

While the countdown to Christmas is exciting, this is a busy time of year in people’s work and personal lives. Calls to our helpline reveal the toll that this takes, causing a myriad of problems including stress, anxiety, withdrawal, burnout, and even long-term trauma. In November last year, the most frequently reported work-related issues were pressure and performance, with the most common effects being anxiety and disrupted sleep. 

Therefore, it’s more important than ever that we don’t forget our people and that we prioritise their well-being. When your staff feel supported, they’re more likely to stick around, and this is especially vital at this time of year. In a season where teams are already stretched, losing staff or having them off sick can be devastating.

And it’s not just seasonal colds and flus causing staff to call in sick. Our research conducted with KAM earlier this year revealed that nearly half of all sick days are linked to poor mental well-being. These sick days cost the hospitality industry a staggering £305m annually – but it’s not just the days employees are off sick that affect the bottom line. A total of 44 additional days are estimated to be lost annually for each employee working while in poor mental or physical health, adding a further 45.7 million days in lost productivity. In other words, equipping your teams with the tools they need to manage stress and pressure isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also smart business sense.

That’s why I’m urging operators not to wait until well-being becomes a crisis this year. Now is the time to take action and build resilient teams. At LTC, we offer a range of free, practical resources to help. Our well-being platform provides access to more than 6,500 tools, including podcasts, webinars, counselling, and live chat support. We also offer a free employee assistance programme in partnership with CIC, and our helpline is available 24/7 for those who need someone to talk to.

Hospitality is a people-first industry, meaning that looking after our people must come first. Let’s make sure the lead-up to Christmas is the exciting and rewarding time it’s meant to be. Invest in your teams now so we can make sure our industry is supported, resilient, and ready to thrive.

Our restaurant business had a big moment this year – we finally paid off our covid debt. We borrowed £300,000 for our business during covid, which, for a business doing a little under £3m in turnover, is 10%. Not huge, but if you look at it against annual profits, it was a lot larger. In any event, it has taken us nigh on five years to pay it off.

As you might expect, this has been the real challenge for us – and I think for many others in the industry. The length of the debt overhang has been significant, and of course, it isn’t just the debt. When we took on our covid loans, the base interest was 0.1%, life didn’t seem too bad. But as soon as base rates raced up to 5%, life looked very different. So, not only have we paid our £300,000 back, but also another £50,000 in interest.

Unsurprisingly, we haven’t been as profitable in the post-covid years – and honestly, I don’t think we’ve been quite as good either. As a management team, we were recently reflecting on some of the team dynamics and realised that a few individuals wouldn’t have met our pre-covid standards. It’s only now that we feel ready and able to raise our expectations back to where they were before. That said, it’s not easy; we’ve all become a bit too used to a slower pace and a culture where hard work hasn’t always been the norm.

On top of that, we haven’t had the cash to invest in our refurbishment programme, which means some areas we would have upgraded earlier have had to wait. I’m only just now getting around to refurbishing a meeting room that hasn’t been touched in 12 years! It can be frustrating, but this is the reality. 

I sometimes wonder whether we should have gone down the company voluntary arrangement route and ditched a load of debt to enable us to start afresh. In truth, I have no idea how common this has been over the last five years, but my suspicion is a lot of people have done it, maybe quietly, and it has helped them get restarted much faster than us. It is one on my list of many regrets.

Nevertheless, the good thing is that, after too long a time, I now feel we are back and able to run the business without any covid overhang – whether in terms of staff or finances. I even took a 16-year-old to work recently because her father was ill and couldn’t drive, and was so impressed by her level of commitment and determination – this really gives me hope.

Service levels are on the rise, we are doing the final bits of refurbishment that have been a little long in the making, and we are feeling positive about what we can achieve. Of course, there are still a few things we need to work on – staff that need to be lifted up to the standards we want, for example. That said, the positives are still there, and it feels like we are moving in the right direction.

There is, of course, the fact that, as an industry, we are still really struggling with a price point that has grown significantly over the years, with the result that volume is, at best, flat. This has meant that our customers will stay home a little more, just come out for a drink or spend a little less when they are here. As operators, we have to find ways to make the value equation work harder for us and deliver experiences that our guests want to come back for. The outcome is that we need, as always, to be holding ourselves to account – constantly questioning how we can improve and where we can do better.

We want to keep raising standards of amenity, service and food quality to make the value equation worth it for our customers. Perhaps now, the business can pay me some of the loans I have put in!

We all love a good debate. Right now, with operators of all shapes and sizes under increasing cost pressure, a hot topic is dynamic pricing. Should hospitality copy the airlines and Ubers of the world, flexing prices by the hour depending on demand? Some argue it’s the future. Others warn of customer backlash.

But here’s the truth: we’re debating the wrong thing. While we argue about the theory of dynamic pricing, millions of pounds are being left on the table because we can’t execute the basics at scale. The real opportunity isn’t in copying airlines – it’s in fixing the clunky processes that stop us getting the most out of pricing strategies we already use today.

Price optimisation isn’t about reacting to demand in real time. It’s about making smarter, data-driven choices on the levers we already pull – menus, price bands, event strategies, bundles, offers and discounts.

The problem isn’t that operators lack ideas – it’s that execution is slow, manual and fragmented. Optimisation is about giving teams the ability to design, deploy, test, and measure these strategies seamlessly, rather than wrestling them through forms, approvals, and manual programming.

Consider event menus. They’re one of the oldest and most effective levers in the book: a focused offer, run at a higher price point, with costs under tighter control. Christmas menus, Valentine’s offers, sports finals – they work.

The issue is scale. Rolling out event menus across hundreds of sites is painfully manual. Operations submit forms, finance signs off, marketing produces collateral, IT reprogrammes all the platforms. By the time the menus go live, the opportunity may already have passed. In many cases, they never make it to the floor at all.

It’s not the strategy that fails – it’s the execution. Technology can change this – define an event menu once, automatically deploy it whenever an event of a certain size is taking place within a defined radius of a site, and measure the results. No bottlenecks. No missed opportunities.

Now look at price bands. Most operators use only two or three. Not because that’s ideal, but because anything more is frankly unmanageable.

The result is blunt segmentation. A city centre flagship and a suburban site are often lumped into the same band, despite obvious differences in customer profile and willingness to pay. That leaves significant margin uncaptured.

With smarter tools, operators could run more granular, data-led price bands without adding complexity for operations or finance. Pricing could reflect real market conditions – precise, profitable, and easy to manage.

Dynamic pricing may grab headlines, but the real upside lies in getting the basics right. Smarter optimisation allows operators to:

● Deploy strategies faster, with less administration.

● Tailor pricing more precisely to local markets.

● Test and refine approaches systematically.

● Unlock margin growth without risking consumer trust.

This is value that can be captured today – no hype required.

The real question isn’t whether hospitality should copy airlines. The real question is why so much value is still being lost because our processes make even simple pricing strategies unscalable.

The good news is this isn’t a theoretical problem. The tools now exist to make pricing strategies faster, more precise, and easier to execute across an entire estate. Operators who embrace them will capture margin that’s currently being left on the table.

So let’s stop arguing about the wrong thing. The opportunity isn’t in some distant future of surge pricing. It’s here, in the strategies we already know work – if only we choose to equip ourselves to execute them properly.