Analysis of 2m hospitality interactions

Analysis of 2m hospitality interactions, by Patrick Clover, Founder and CEO, Stampede

My job is to work with hospitality businesses to enable them to collect data, help them understand the numbers, and use this information to better understand customers. Usually this is a conversation had with customers, not my internal team, but we recently turned this data lens inwards to our own data set. We analysed more than 2,000,000 customer interactions in the UK hospitality sector across 2020. We had a keen interest in understanding how the industry responded to the pandemic and the impact of fluctuating government guidelines on human behaviour.

Below are some of our key findings, many of which fly in the face of perceived notions about how customers/businesses behaved during lockdown.

Eat Out to Help Out only helped a bit

While the Eat Out To Help Out scheme was active, 48.1% of UK restaurant visits were on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Wednesday even became the most popular day of the week for restaurants, remarkably overtaking Friday and Saturday. This was seen as a great result for hospitality at the time, but that stance is a bit less popular now during the second spike. Our data also suggests that EOTHO cannibalised weekend trade to some extent, which is usually more lucrative.

Drinking responsibly

Despite negative headlines and social media posts of late night drinking in the streets when cases were rising fast, our data suggests this was only a very small minority. In fact, the UK population moved away from late night drinking and dining long before curfews were introduced to curb this behaviour. We saw that pubs, bars and restaurants all experienced much earlier spikes in traffic vs 2019. Very few customers were going out late at night even when they were technically allowed to do so.

Likewise, England did not go overboard when pubs reopened on 4^th July. Dubbed “Independence Day”, pubs had a similar number of customers this weekend compared to most in July, and only a fraction of the numbers recorded in August, September, and October.

Returning customer dependencies

When hospitality businesses reopened in the summer post-lockdown, it took a lot of time for people to come back (the hospitality sector cannot be turned on and off like a tap). When it did get back to normal figures, venues were far more dependent on regular / returning customers rather than attracting new ones. People were going out far less, there was no tourism trade, nor impromptu trips to try new venues. It really underscored the importance of having a core group of regulars and creating events/promotions for them.

Throughout the pandemic, the hospitality sector has shown amazing agility and resilience. Businesses moved heaven and earth to reopen safely and service their community, and it shows in the data too.

For more information and results, the full report can be accessed here.