It’s a cliche but I really can’t believe that it’s time to write again for the Christmas edition, my life really is on fast forward. Before continuing we must remember that times remain uncertain – last year the situation changed radically between writing and going to press so let’s see how it goes this year.
Christmas and New Year 2020 was a bumper one, so we got ahead of everything with trees, decorations and hampers placed in nearly 100 properties well in advance. Boris was determined that families would be able to get together but the virus had other ideas. Right at the last minute we were shut again and into reverse – sending money back to customers is not a good business model and taking down unused trees and decorations is a really thankless task. Still all those hampers helped us to get through the months of lockdown that followed.
Like my junior education by nuns I’ve blanked this second lockdown out of my mind. I remember the first one – zoom parties, quiz nights and takeaways but the second time round it really wasn’t funny. I have a house with a garden, plenty of space and grown up children but solitary confinement really doesn’t suit me. It’s safe to say I won’t be joining the work from home revolution.
January and February are traditionally when many people book their summer holiday and give a good indication of performance for the year ahead. The media built up the staycation boom story and to use a technical term, things went bananas. This is when I have to admit an uncomfortable and embarrassing truth – the worse things get the better it is for us, particularly when expectations are raised then dashed. The U-turn about schools reopening after February half term resulted in such a spike in bookings that it literally went off every chart that I use.
Now of course in our business you have a finite resource – once a property is sold out you can’t sell it again or order up 10 more so how is it that the UK holiday industry could deliver more capacity? Glamping sites sprung up around the country, sales of caravans and campers boomed and many second home owners who don’t rent their properties out had a change of heart. In our case the perfect storm of low interest rates, proximity to London and remote working meant a boom in second home purchases in Sandbanks and a steady stream of new owners.
There was an offset to all this good news – we were still closed! We got into a routine of cancelling bookings 3-4 weeks in advance so as the bookings rolled in we were also sending money back. This wasn’t much of an issue until Easter when refunds started to approach new income and we stared nervously at May half term which would be the first big blow, June would be really painful, July a catastrophe and I don’t even want to think about August.
Fortunately self catering was one of the first categories to open up and just after Easter we welcomed guests back and went to full capacity overnight. The challenge now was the logistics of delivering more holidays than we ever had before and all of our systems were stretched to breaking point- cleaning, linen, maintenance, even purchasing.
How wrong can I be?
We approached the peak weeks with confidence and waited for the tide of applications to work with us. Some hospitality was still closed, some would never return so there would be an army of skilled and motivated staff to choose from. In addition there was a massive group of people on furlough collecting 80% of their income and able to go out and do another job – the penny and the bun! Over the years I’ve got a taste for humble pie and along with my words and my hat I ate a lot of it this year. What transpired, of course, is that the opposite was true, most businesses suffered from severe staff shortages and the season was a big blur of crisis management and somehow getting things done each weekend.
So what is to come for the next 12 months? Surely we will be open this Christmas – by the time you are reading this you’ll know and I’m now trying to forecast and plan for 2022.
As I said last year, there are probably two types of forecast, lucky or wrong and given the almost unimaginable events ot the last 2 years it’s not really valid to use the data for projections. What I can say is that advance bookings for the next 12 months are higher than at this point last year (or any other year). All the indications are that we’ll have another strong season for UK holidays and maybe there has been a permanent
shift in preferences.
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