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UKHospitality is the secretariat for the APPG.
This week the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Hospitality and Tourism held a breakfast meeting at the Park Plaza, Westminster Bridge.
This meeting gave MPs the opportunity to hear a state of the nation update from Allen Simpson, Deputy CEO of UKHospitality.
It was noted that this is the first Christmas where trading will not be impacted by Covid or travel strikes. But the market is about to get tougher.
There was a discussion on how businesses were feeling about the impact of announcements in the budget and 2025 was dubbed the year of survival with businesses struggling to absorb the £3.4 billion in employment cost increases from the budget (National Living Wage and taxes).
Members then heard from Daniel Pedreschi, Vice President of Operations UK at Park Plaza who gave a presentation on hotel trading, future investment and their work on the skills agenda.
The Park Plaza Westminster Bridge holds, 1,023 beds, 60% of which are family rooms. Daniel discussed several macro challenges affecting city hotels such as the shift in cooperate travel plans and external influences such as energy costs still effecting housekeeping and laundry services. He also took the group through their onboarding and training programme.
Their employees represent 94 different countries.
11% of their employees have been working at the Park Plaza for 5-10 years and 39% for 1-3 years
54% of their team are female
The youngest member of staff is 16 and oldest is 72.
This was followed by a Q&A session with Daniel on the hotels work on apprenticeships, expansion outside London and recruitment and retention of staff.
The Park Plaza team kindly gave MPs a tour of their events space and kitchens. The event space in the basement of the hotel has 8 kitchens and aims to serve 1,100 dishes in 11 minutes.
To celebrate the festive period the Park Plaza have crafted their very own gingerbread house made of 600kg of gingerbread. The mouth-watering structure offers over 129 sq ft of pure festive joy and is designed to make every customer staying over the festive period truly welcome.
Thank you to our member Park Plaza for hosting and to Chris Webb MP, Damian Hinds MP, Manuela Perteghella MP and Mike Reader MP for attending.
