The COVID-19 pandemic caused sudden global disruptions to places and people, with significant psychological, social, and economic effects. Hospitality was one of the most affected industries worldwide throughout the pandemic due to multiple lockdowns and government restrictions. In the UK, the industry was also affected by Brexit, but the end of its period coincided with the beginning of a lockdown, making it difficult to separate the impacts of the two (Hutton and Foley, 2021, n.d). The hospitality industry mainly includes food and accommodation industries, including cafes, Airbnbs, pubs, restaurants, bars, and hotels. The first lockdown resulted in grounded flights restricting the flow of customers in the hospitality business. The lack of business caused job losses, decreased revenue, and worldwide uncertainty.

Hospitality Restrictions

Trading restrictions caused by the pandemic disproportionally affected the food and accommodation businesses. The public was warned against restaurants, bars, and other indoor fun facilities. On March 20, the government ordered the closure of hospitality businesses unless the services were takeaway or deliveries. A few months later, the companies were able to reopen but had to follow the social distance restrictions (Brown, 2021, n.d). This lowered the capacity that a venue can hold hence reducing customers. Also, they were restricted on the meals and drinks served. The England-wide lockdown led to the closure of cafes, restaurants, bars, and pubs, except for takeaway.

For accommodation, leasing an Airbnb house or sharing a rented room through Couchsurfing has become almost impossible due to the new restrictions. A while back, the sharing economy, which the economy has become a crucial element, was expected to grow to approximately $335 billion by 2025. By June 2020, hotel bookings had reduced by 92% instead of February of the same year. Similarly, passenger flow via Heathrow had a decrease of 97%. For a global firm like Hilton, which owns numerous properties across over 100 countries, they experienced an 81% decrease in revenue per available room (RevPAR) in the second quarter. The restrictions that affected accommodation sharing include border closures, flight cancellations, quarantines, and lockdown. On the supply end, statistics show a significant decrease in income for Airbnb hosts. Many employees were laid off staff forced to reduce their revenue forecast. Quarantine and lockdown devastated the physical and digital connection in the sharing economy (Gerwe, 2021, p.120733). While the digital aspects remained unaltered by world events, the physical side of leaving the house, travelling, doing transactions, and entering someone else’s property became impossible. Therefore, even though the guest and the host remained connected, the consumption and distribution of services were unbelievable.

Consumer Demand

Statistics show that the demand for eating out increased relative to 2019 between Monday and Wednesday during the pandemic due to the Eat Out Help out Scheme. By August 31, which was the last day of the scheme, the industry experienced a significant improvement in seated customers instead of the same day a year before. By September, the numbers had dropped to around 10% of the 2019 levels.

The government developed the scheme to support the reopening of the business due to the first lockdown. The strategy aimed to maintain jobs within the hospitality industry by encouraging citizens to eat in hotels and restaurants. The government offered 50% off the cost of meals and non-alcoholic beverages consumed in the hotels and restaurants. Generally, close to £850 million was claimed under the Eat Out Help Out scheme in over 78,000 outlets. The total amount paid was £840 million, caused by errors in payment details and rejected sales. Even though the strategy boosted customer demand, it was dropped when restrictions were re-imposed.

Economic Output

In 2019, the UK economic output of the hospitality industry was over £59 billion, which corresponded to about 3% of the total financial out in the state. About 30% of the total output was from accommodation, while 70% came from food and drinks service. Over 24% of the total production from the whole industry was based in London, while almost 15% was established in the South East. However, the significance of hospitality services to the economic production of each area is similar. They make up to 4% of the entire financial work for each country and region (Hutton and Foley, 2021, n.d).

Businesses

At the begging of 2020, there were over 200,000 food and accommodation businesses, which makes up close to 4% of all businesses. Of these, 10% were employers. 77% includes the food and drink service enterprises, while accommod