The third and final of Quantaco’s webinar series took place Wednesday, finding agreement amongst the expert panellists that hospitality is surfacing from challenges into a wave of opportunity.
Quantaco COO Scott Barber was joined by Australia Venue Co. CEO Paul Waterson, Marlow Hotel Group MD Jason Marlow, and Quantaco founder and CEO Anthony Sullivan.
Despite the fact hospitality has traditionally been an asset not well understood by institutional investors, the panel were in agreement on the industry’s future as an investment class. Perception is that consolidation by large groups is the dominant force, but about 90 per cent of venues in Australia remain privately owned.
“Both private and corporate investors are now noticing it as they see opportunities to scale,” noted Sullivan.
Industry doyen Jason Marlow differentiated that having revenue and patrons doesn’t always translate into a good business, and offered his five-point plan for hotel management. He says operators:
- must have excellent bookkeeping and industry benchmarking, to know margins
- engineer a business to scale correctly and optimise profitable offerings
- act sustainably, with longevity in mind
- maximise profits through consistent revenue, modelling and wage control
- diversify revenues and maximise every income stream
In an era of rapidly increasing valuations on both freeholds and leaseholds, the guests discussed the merits of lease length, and the strategic options they can provide.
While agreement the industry has been in challenging times goes without saying, there was strong belief “the worst is behind us” and there will be great opportunity emerging from the pent-up demand for hospitality services.
And the theory that suburban pubs will reap the benefits of new behaviours such as working from home was questioned, with suggestion the investment in the CBDs will inevitably bring about their return, albeit perhaps in a changed form.
Change is afoot across the sector, and while the trend toward big data will be influential it will not be at the expense of the fundamentals of hospitality.
“I’d caution against widescale change to the business model,” suggested Waterson on the array of technological products and solutions entering pubs, including AVC’s, leveraging its database of two million members.
He warns not to use technology as a proxy for labour reduction, instead “use it to free people to deliver a better, more hospitable in-venue experience”.
This is all the more pertinent in the midst of an existential labour crunch, as many workers flee the industry and labour inflow from overseas remains challenged.
“There will be massive labour shortages into 2022 that we need to be planning for now, otherwise you are going to miss one of the biggest boom times this sector will have seen,” boded Waterson.
All three webinars are available at Quantaco Webinar Series.
