High Tea & Trends: 2016’s Top Trends for UK Bed & Breakfasts

Little Hotelier was in attendance at UK’s largest event for independent, luxury and boutique hotels; The Independent Hotel Show.

At the conference, our presentation with B&B Association’s David Weston covered Great ways to Capitalise on Emerging Traveller Trends over high tea and scones.

With James Bishop from Little Hotelier heading the presentation, we covered the latest trends in the independent hotel market, along with tips on how they could be harnessed for revenue.

Here are all of the stats that we covered.

The state of the UK bed and breakfast industry

• The UK bed and breakfast sector comprises of 25,000 small businesses. Tweet this!
• The UK bed and breakfast sector has a combined turnover of £22 billion. Tweet this!
• TripAdvisor users score bed and breakfasts 15% higher than hotels. Tweet this!
• UK inbound travel is up by 5% (as of the first half of 2015, at 16.8 million people). Tweet this!
• UK outbound spend is up 8.1% this summer. Tweet this!
• Staycations are taken by 77% of UK adults. Tweet this!

Trend 1: Health and wellness

• Wellness tourists spend 130% more than the average tourist. Tweet this!
• B&Bs should provide jogging routes to health focused travellers. Tweet this!
• B&Bs should partner with local spas to offer pamper packages to guests. Tweet this!

Trend 2: Guest loyalty

• B&Bs should invest in guest loyalty to increase revenue per guest. Tweet this!
• Millennials are the key to guest loyalty. Tweet this!
• Millennials go out of their way to stay at a preferred hotel. Tweet this!
• Upsell VIP treatments to millennial guests. Tweet this!
• Millennials want your B&B’s loyalty program to reward them in 3 months. Tweet this!

Trend 3: Meta search engines

• Google and TripAdvisor are toeing the line between metasearch engine and OTA. Tweet this!
• TripAdvisor and Google are ever more important for B&Bs distribution strategy. Tweet this!

Trend 4: Increased competition

• B&Bs in the UK are seeing competition from budget hotel brands. Tweet this!
• B&Bs in the UK are seeing growth in competition from ‘spare bedroom’ websites like Airbnb & Wimdu. Tweet this!
• B&Bs in the UK are becoming more boutique and design-led. Tweet this!
• B&Bs in the UK are sourcing local food to stand out from the crowd. Tweet this!
• B&Bs in the UK are using ‘green credentials’ to market themselves. Tweet this!

Trend 5: Online booking

• More travel is being booked online, especially on mobile device. Tweet this!
• Younger guests increasingly expect to book a B&B online. Tweet this!
• Online travel agencies (OTAs) are becoming more powerful and important to B&Bs in the UK. Tweet this!
• Destination marketing organisations (DMOs) are going online and providing instant booking services. Tweet this!

But wait… there’s more!

Watch our on-demand video, where we provide practical tips on how to capitalise on the top travel trends. Register here or click on the link below.