14 minute read / author: Liane Abrams

The UK is slowly but surely opening up again, with pubs, bars and restaurants the latest to be allowed to reopen their doors and travel destinations not far behind. But, following a three month hiatus for most operations and a hefty list of new safety requirements to adhere to, can the hospitality industry expect to bounce-back to what it was any time soon?

Big brands in the hospitality sector have been collapsing left, right and centre during this pandemic, and the situation for small businesses has sadly been even worse. Some sources claim nearly one million small businesses are “on the brink of collapse” as a result of the pandemic, and the hardest hit are those in the hospitality and travel industries.

However, the news is not entirely bad. The pandemic has created opportunities for small businesses to stand out from the crowds, support their communities and build a loyal and lasting audience - an audience that will do what they can to keep their favourite brands alive.

Throughout the pandemic, a lot of brands have taken to social media and got creative with the ways they stay in touch with their community. From restaurants hosting virtual events and wine tastings to drinks brands hosting cocktail classes.

There are a few that really stood out to us which we’ve rounded up below for you, as well as some creative thinking that will prove valuable for anyone building a brand now and in the future.

Most importantly, if you’re in the hospitality industry, what can you do on social media right now? We’ve put together some quick tips to help you re-engage your audience and get customers through the doors.

The travel & hospitality industries

Quite understandably, the travel and hospitality industries have suffered over the last few months. The global pandemic effectively eradicated international travel for weeks, leaving a huge dent in tourism revenue as well as threatening the livelihoods of the thousands of travel employees. Domestically, pubs, bars and restaurants were forced to close, and only those who could manage takeaway options were able to continue trading, albeit on a severely restricted basis.

We spoke to two people who have been feeling the effects of the pandemic on their industry first-hand.

Travel: Matt Ovenden, CEO & Founder at ‘Borrow a Boat’

Borrow A Boat is a tech-based startup connecting travellers with boat owners - without the faff. An AirBnB for boats, Borrow A Boat offers boat rentals all over the world, for novices and serial-sailors alike.

Speaking to us about the impact of the pandemic, Matt says, “We’ve been heavily impacted. All charters were banned worldwide for a time, as well as travel, and all leads and bookings ground to a halt for several months. Existing bookings had to be postponed, rescheduled or cancelled and refunded”. However, Matt and the Borrow A Boat team used the down-time (once the mania of reschedules and cancellations had died down) to focus on tech improvements, improve efficiency across the company, and engage in M&A talks.

Coming out of lockdown now, Matt is seeing a return to some sort of normality: “Borders are back open and charters can resume. We’re seeing a surge of interest for charters this month (July) and next (August) in particular, as the pent-up demand sees people desperate to get away and do something. We’re also seeing a preference for UK charters over Mediterranean, which is a shift in our customers’ behaviour.”

Concluding on a positive note, Matt says, “While I’m not sure I could honestly say it’s done the industry much good at all, we’ve used the time to focus on improvements, to emerge as a stronger entity to what might be a depleted field of competitors”.

Hospitality: Simon Allison, Head of Marketing at ‘Inception Group’

Inception Group owns and operates a number of high-end bars, restaurants and clubs across London. Highly experiential in nature and focussed on visitor experience above all else, Inception Group, like everyone in the hospitality industry, saw revenues plummet to zero as a result of March’s nationwide lockdown. In Simon’s words, “our venues are centred around experiences you can’t get at home, so without the doors open, it hit us hard.”

Unlike many other hospitality brands, Simon and the Inception Group team made the decision early on to keep social media active - and, if anything, more engaging than before. They recognised the power of captive audiences stuck at home and tapped into that, with the goal of being “at the forefront of their thoughts when booking lines, and then venues, reopened”.

Looking to the future, Simon is positive: “I think one of the pleasing takeaways from lockdown is that people or businesses that would have been seen as rivals have become friends and supporters of one another. As an industry, we realise that we are stronger as a collective and have to work together for the better good. Going forward, there will be no and low budgets, so creativity will be key.”

Using social media to re-engage your audience

The pandemic has had an impact on three things:

The amount of time we all spend on social media has increased dramatically
The cost of using paid social media to reach your audience has decreased
The creative content playing field has levelled significantly

Combined, these three things make social media an incredibly powerful tool to get your business back on its feet again, even if you’ve been quiet for the last few months.

If you already have an engaged social media audience…

Now is your chance to think strategically and creatively to get the most out of your audience. The most important thing here is to start showing up again on your social channels - if you’ve been a little quiet online over the past few months, it’s especially important to acknowledge your absence and be honest with your audience. Everyone has been struggling, and what we, as consumers, want is to feel like other people have been going through similar things.

The more open and honest you are about how your business has struggled, and how you are planning to get back on your feet, the more of an emotional connection you’ll be able to make with your audience. And, ultimately, people make buying decisions with their emotions, not logic.

If you’ve been keeping your audience up-to-date throughout the pandemic, you already know the importance of showing up. Now, it’s time to start educating your audience about the changes you’ve made to keep everyone safe and encourage them to convert their likes into bookings. A lot of people are still concerned about how safe it is to be out and about in the big wide world, so do everything you can to demonstrate the measures you’ve put in place.

If you get low engagement on your social media channels…

There’s unfortunately no magic bullet to instantly re-engage your audience if your accounts have been particularly dormant recently. Every social media algorithm, regardless of platform, wants you to be consistent, and if you’ve disappeared for the last few months you won’t see an immediate return to your pre-disappearance engagement levels. If those engagement levels were never very high, you’ve got an even steeper hill to climb.

However, it’s far from impossible. As we mentioned earlier, the amount of time each of us is spending on social media at the moment is high - which, for you as a business, means that there are more potential eyeballs your content could attract. The key here is to make the most of the fact that the playing field has levelled out by understanding what it is your customers are looking for.

The pandemic has hit everyone in the hospitality and travel industries equally. While it’s certainly true that bigger businesses have more of a cushion to fall back on financially, everyone’s revenue has plummeted, meaning that everyone has faced the choice of pivoting to a new way of business, or collapsing. For your social media activity, this is a positive thing. Big businesses with big advertising budgets are no longer able to spend thousands on highly-polished photo shoots or long, convoluted video adverts: everything is being done from home, on a budget. And the most successful content over the last few months has had one thing in common: creativity, with minimal resources.

So, take a look at what your competitors are doing and what’s working for them - but don’t restrict yourself to the tried-and-tested. Now is the perfect time to experiment with your content, and do something that no-one else in your industry is doing. Consistently be creative with your content, and your audience will become more engaged.

Creative use of social media

There are a few small businesses that have stood out over the past few months for their honesty, their authenticity and their ability to adapt. While some businesses have been able to offer alternative versions of their offerings (e.g. click-and-collect or delivery options), others have not - but that doesn’t mean they’ve kept their audience in the dark.

Mr Fogg’s @mrfoggsgb

Mr Fogg’s Collection is a number of bars and venues across London, all designed to transport you “back to the Victorian era”. Mr Fogg’s venues are centred around experiences you can’t get at home, so without the doors open, it hit the business hard. While they were forced to close like everyone else, Simon Allison, Head of Marketing at Inception Group (the parent company of Mr Fogg’s), recognised the opportunity in the crisis:

“We recreated experiences and events we would usually host in venues but online, such as swing dance lessons, weekly explorer talks including from the likes of Levison Wood and Kenton Cool, pizza making classes and singalongs. We had many more ideas of how we could have kept our brands alive and diversified during the lockdown but with the vast majority of the company being furloughed we didn’t have the resource to do everything we would have liked to.”

Mr Fogg’s Instagram page is benefitting from this creative approach, and from the extra time we’re all spending online. While the path ahead is far from certain and there are many hurdles still to overcome, Mr Fogg’s reopened “near enough at our new capacity” and Simon notes that “one of the pleasing takeaways from lockdown is that people or businesses that would have been seen as rivals have become friends and supporters of one another.”

Simon’s advice for moving forward goes for many brands, not just those in hospitality and to us makes perfect sense. He said, “I think for now we can’t look too far ahead, we need to keep learning at every moment and evolve accordingly”.

The Wine Rooms @thewineroomstw

The Wine Rooms is, unsurprisingly, a wine bar in the heart of Kent. When they were forced to close their doors to in-person service, their online shop became their saving grace. However, rather than becoming overly-sales-y and pushing their online store in every single social media post, The Wine Rooms pivoted to keep their audience engaged by releasing home-shot IGTV videos of their founder, Dan Hatton, talking about his ‘Pick of the Wines’.

The videos are entertaining, lighthearted, but also do the trick of telling their audience that they can buy wine online. It was a great move to keep their audience engaged and make them stand out from the faceless bigger competition!

Now that The Wine Rooms is back open, their customers are returning and their social media engagement is rocketing.

Fuggles Beer Cafe @fugglesbeercafe

Unlike The Wine Rooms, Fuggles Beer Cafe (who have two branches in Kent that were almost always over capacity!) had never needed to think about online sales before the pandemic.

When forced to close in mid-March, they managed to turn around their business model completely within an impressive 11 days - going from a basic landing page website to a full ecommerce operation. All product photography was shot in-house and all deliveries were made locally by Fuggles’ founder. Within 3 days, they had to temporarily pause online orders as demand was 3 times what they expected and more than they could handle!

Since then, the store has gone from strength to strength and has managed to keep the business afloat while so many others fail. And now, with permission to reopen, Fuggles have explained honestly and openly to their audience that they aren’t quite ready to do so yet. There’s no pretense, no excuses - just honest communication. And that’s what keeps their audience engaged.

Using digital tools to ease the transition

Opening back up to customers is an exciting time - but it’s also more than a little nerve-wracking. With hundreds of rules and recommendations floating around, the way you operate is going to look a lot different than you’re used to. And all those rules can be intimidating for your customers, too.

One of the best ways to encourage your customers to feel comfortable is to explain things clearly on social media so they can know what to expect. Do a walkthrough of your new procedures and post on your social channels, so people know clearly what to expect when they arrive. Explain things honestly and openly and reassure people that they’re in safe hands. Check out this example for an easy way of explaining the new safety measures in a local restaurant.

Aside from social media, there are plenty of other digital tools that will make the transition into reopening simple and easy - for you and for your customers. One of the biggest changes for many restaurants, pubs and bars is the necessity to pre-book before arrival. And one of the biggest challenges facing small businesses who haven’t been using online systems before is managing that hurdle, without needing an entire call centre team taking bookings over the phone.

The best thing to do is keep it simple, here are a few options:

Online reservation systems:

Without thousands of pounds to invest in a completely custom-built online reservation system, there are a number of ways you can implement digital bookings onto your existing website.

If you’re using Squarespace…

Squarespace has an in-built Scheduling system, designed to allow reservations, appointment bookings and classes to be made through your website. At a very basic level, this will allow you to create a schedule of when tables are available, and let your customers book a specific time through the system.

For restaurant reservations, it’s possible to create different ‘appointments’ with different ‘staff members’ in the Squarespace Scheduling system - where appointments can be blocks of time and staff members can be particular tables or seating areas in your restaurant. You can connect your Scheduling system to whichever calendar suits you best, so that your staff can easily see all bookings.

Alternatively, Squarespace offers integration with a number of third-party apps via embedded code, or you can use OpenTable to connect directly with Squarespace.

If you’re using Wordpress…

Wordpress offers much more flexibility and functionality than Squarespace, but often does require a little technical knowledge to make things run smoothly. You’ll find hundreds of restaurant reservation plugins available through the Wordpress plugin marketplace, but be careful not to choose one that a) is incompatible with your version of Wordpress or your Wordpress theme, or b) requires costly monthly subscriptions to run!

An example is FiveStar Restaurant Reservations, which does require a one-off license fee payment, but after that is free to use. Much like the Squarespace Scheduling system, this plugin allows customers to book tables at times you’ve pre-set in your availability calendar, and will link out to Mailchimp for automated reminder emails and to your calendar so your staff are able to see all bookings.

There are hundreds of options out there, so take a look at this article for a nudge in the right direction for which is best for you.

If you’re using a custom-built website…

Chances are, if you’re using a custom built website it has been built on Wordpress. If so, the options above are valid - choose a plugin that suits your needs, and add it to your Wordpress site.

If your site has been built on something else entirely, such as Python, you may be limited as to what you can achieve without an experienced web developer. However, if you don’t have the funds to hire a developer to build a custom reservation platform, you could use a simple system like Calendly as a stop-gap option.

Calendly allows you to generate a link for customers to use to book an appointment with you - which, if your restaurant is fairly small and has limited capacity, could be an effective way of taking reservations without needing a developer to implement. Ultimately, it’s finding something that works for you - and if a booking system is the only thing stopping you from opening back up, a simple solution like Calendly could be an ideal interim workaround.

Above all… do things your way

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from this pandemic, it is the importance of carving your own path and doing things your way. Yes, it’s important to understand your industry’s landscape and know what your competitors are doing, but it’s even more important to be doing things that feel like you.

The pandemic has forced so many of us to slow down and reevaluate things, and it turns out that most of us are looking for that nugget of honesty and authenticity that so many of the bigger companies out there are failing to give us. Now is your opportunity, as a small business, to really reclaim your audience’s attention, through consistency, transparency and making these new, uncertain processes simple for your customers.

It has always been important to share behind-the-scenes of your business on social media, but now more than ever we all want to know the realities you’re facing, not your highlight reel. Keep things natural, and make them you, not just a copy of your competition.

We build brands that matter. If you want your brand to stand out online, we can help. Get in touch about social media, email marketing, digital marketing or design.