Park Plaza hotel operator warns of ‘quite severe’ staff shortages in London
Park Plaza hotel operator PPHE has reported revenue recovering to 39.5 per cent of 2019 levels as it warns of “quite severe” staff shortages in the coming months.
Shares in the company dipped slightly on Tuesday morning after PPHE announced a 38.9 per cent total revenue increase to £141.4m for the financial year ended 31 December 2021.
Although the hotel brand was managing a sector labour crunch “quite well,” Daniel Kos, PPHE chief financial officer, warned of increasing recruitment difficulties, in an interview with CityA.M.
Roles that have been tough to recruit for include room attendants, chefs and back office staff.
The labour crunch is not a new phenomenon for the sector and Kos said the current difficulties were “not a surprise” following an exodus of European workers from London amid Brexit.
“I think we are coping with it, it is hard work but we have a few things that make us different,” Kos added, pointing to the hotel group’s in-house housekeeping and staff accommodation.
“The biggest challenge really is labour, for the coming months. The booking pace seems to pick up quite steeply, we are coping currently but there is more demand to come,” he said.
Despite the challenges, Kos was optimistic about the hotel sector’s recovery with the UK recently scrapping all travel restrictions.
He said: “We are an industry that has been battered over the past two years and now Covid looks to be going into the background. The opportunity we have is to get out of thia and recover from this.”
PPHE is well-placed to reap the benefits of the sector’s Covid recovery as it invested more than £100m into its portfolio just before the pandemic struck.
“Our portfolio is nearly new, it gives us a nice advantage,” Kos added.
“London has quite a good domestic market, now with the UK taking away all measures [travel] is relatively frictionless. We have noticed that in enquiries with air crews, the travel is picking up.”
In the hotel group’s results, PPHE president and CEO Boris Ivesha said: “While a number of macroeconomic pressures are likely to remain for the near term, our attractive portfolio, strong financial position and excellent team, provide confidence that the strong customer demand for our leading proposition will enable the group to capitalise on both short-term demand and long-term growth opportunities to deliver for all stakeholders.”
The group reported recovery across all of its key operating metrics with revenue per available room (RevPAR) up 22.1 per cent year-on-year to £35.9.
Its average room rate rose 11.4 per cent to represent 91.1 per cent of 2019 levels while occupancy improved to 30.7 per cent.