The leisure and hospitality (L&H) sector has faced an extraordinary range of risks and uncertainty in recent years, arising from accelerating shifts in technology and the digitisation of services, sustainability drivers, continued talent shortages, the rise of the metaverse and, of course, the impact of COVID-19.
Continued success for some L&H businesses is likely to involve embracing and catalysing radical change. Such change creates a dynamic risk landscape, where uncovering the roadmap to continued success will demand clarity on where your greatest risks lie, how they can be mitigated, or how they might be transformed into opportunity.
To help provide this vital clarity, WTW has sought to gain a deeper understanding of the trends and strategic issues likely to affect trading for the L&H sector over the next 10 years and beyond. In doing so, we have partnered with researchers from Mack Institute’s Collaborative Innovation Program (CIP) at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and forward thinking inc.
We sought answers to the following high-level questions:
Researchers surveyed and interviewed L&H industry leaders, and also gained insight via round tables and desk research, considering a range of L&H sub-sectors, namely:
WTW experts overlaid the research insights with their own industry perspectives to illuminate the evolving risk landscape, not only considering insurance, but offering practical guidance on how L&H businesses can tackle and take control of emerging issues.
As such, the L&H Futures Report 2022 considers the mega-trends, identifies the risks, as well as the potential new openings, but also includes actions L&H businesses might take now to be better-positioned for the future.
Our research confirms the wide-ranging impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic merely accelerated trends already underway. Similarly, while the cost of living crisis and inflationary pressures were only beginning to make themselves widely felt at the time we carried out the core research, the various opportunities and action points identified may well empower cost-pressurised organisations to take a surer stance as conditions tighten.
Many notable sector advancements, such as increasing reliance on third party technology, monetising the metaverse, cashless operations, and serving ageing customer will impact an organisations’ risk profile. Some of these new risks may be hitherto unseen or uninterrogated.
So, in our report, we delve into relatively unexplored areas in the L&H sector, such as cyber harassment in the metaverse and the evolving impact of AI, understanding that recognising emerging exposures is the first step to clarifying how to address and maximise them.
We’ll be publishing the L&H Futures Report 2022 later this year. If you’d like to find out more about the report, or need expert help navigating the future of your L&H business in the meantime, get in touch.
