York & North Yorkshire Hospitality Forum

Hospitality is at the heart of our region with most of us using it each day. Whether for leisure or business, hospitality is never far away. We can all remember how we felt when we were locked down and our visits to the local café for coffee, meals out, business, celebrations, moments of reflection, and saying goodbye were stopped.

As a sector that has had, and continues to have, huge challenges, hospitality has shown its resilience, but its survival and growth is hugely important and underpins a significant part of the region’s economy.

The commercial impact of hospitality is huge and far wider than any individual business. The jobs created, the supply chain, the supporting services, the incremental knock on are all significant.

We must also look forward and look at how society is changing and where hospitality fits in. How it embraces technology, how it understands and reduces its impact on the environment, how it looks after those that work in it, and what the future might look like.

For nearly 160 years, The British Chambers of Commerce have been vital in providing business support; for those who own and work within them. Over these years it has been the champion to many sectors supporting them when they needed help, lobbying for reform and fairness, and raising their profile. York & North Yorkshire Chamber has an outstanding history of leading this support for businesses across the region and is proud to put its weight and voice behind hospitality.  In recognition of the pivotal role played by the hospitality industry in the York and North Yorkshire region the Chamber has decided to establish a York and North Yorkshire Hospitality Forum to represent and support the industry locally, nationally and internationally.

There are many challenges that now face the sector. These are covered under the 8 themes below:

1. Skills To understand the skills shortage and explore possible solutions.
2. Perception To help people understand the dynamic, exciting, flexible, and diverse nature of hospitality.
3. Local priority To work with local leaders and organisations to ensure that Devolution makes hospitality a priority.
4. Lobby Government To ensure that the UK government is aware at all times of the big issues that are impacting the region’s hospitality.
5. Sustainability To encourage businesses to understand how they can reduce their impact on the environment.
6. Celebrate To seek out, celebrate, and thank the great people in hospitality across the region.
7. Technology To help businesses understand how technology can help their revenue, service, quality, and efficiency.
8. Finance To ensure that hospitality businesses have access to affordable finance, grants, and funding.

The Hospitality Forum has been established to support and help businesses to tackle some of these issues and will be led by a steering group established to discuss, understand, and learn what can be done to help with some of the challenges being faced.

The purpose of the Chamber of Commerce’s York and North Yorkshire Hospitality Forum is simply to

“Give hospitality a voice”