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I got to talk about rising costs in hospitality with Simon Blackbourne and Chris Fletcher 🍞 last Wednesday which was very insightful. My main message was to stop trying to control what you can't control. Yes, employer NI has gone up. Living wage increases hurt. But panicking and cutting hours everywhere backfires. What we covered: - The cost crisis hitting hospitality - How manual processes multiply cost problems - Real cost savings through better forecasting and automation - When AI actually helps cut costs vs. expensive distractions Check out the session recording here: Rising costs in hospitality: how data can help struggling operators https://lnkd.in/dDMyJnvi

Hospitality has always been an instinct-driven industry. You feel when a site's busy, when a shift's short, or when the menu's not landing. But the industry's changing; margins are tighter, costs sharper, and small decisions add up fast. As Jon Townsend said on a recent Tech on Toast webinar: "We relied on gut feel and emotion and what we think is happening rather than what we know is happening." The shift isn't about losing that gut feel, it's about proving it right. When leaders trust their data as much as their instincts, the conversation changes. Ops teams stop arguing over "what happened" and start asking "what can we do next?". Culture follows data. The best operators we see today are the ones building teams that make decisions based on shared, trusted insight, not assumptions or legacy habits. Want to have a free no-obligation chat about your current hospitality data challenges? Feel free to book a time: https://lnkd.in/erFWNxjE --- 🟠 Follow me and Ometis for more on turning #HospitalityData into decisions Jon Townsend #TechOnToast

The state of UK Hospitality this Christmas: the numbers don't lie. Let me paint the full picture of what hospitality operators are facing this December: The workforce crisis: UK hospitality venues face over 132,000 vacancies (48% higher than pre-pandemic levels). Add to that the 89,000 workers the sector lost since last October, and the picture becomes clear: you can't hire your way through peak season. The cost reality: Employing a full-time team member now costs at least £2,500 more annually than it did last year. UK hotel payroll costs per available room jumped from £44.59 to £47.57 in December 2024, with London seeing an even steeper climb from £59.07 to £63.52. The margin squeeze: Restaurants, pubs and bars recorded 3.2% year-on-year sales growth in December 2024, but every penny of that growth got swallowed by higher payroll and energy bills. Guest demand was strong, but margins couldn't keep up with labour costs rising faster than revenue. The bottom line: With employment costs rising again in 2025, the squeeze isn't easing. You need to plan better with the team you've got. Here's what's working: Real labour forecasting starts with data integration. When you can correlate historical sales with bookings, events and even weather trends, you stop guessing and start anticipating. You know which roles you need and when you need them. The results speak for themselves. Venues using AI-led labour planning have achieved up to 10% labour cost savings and cut overtime by 3% per week. When you connect scheduling and payroll directly to POS, you get wage cost versus sales analytics that show you exactly where you stand throughout the shift. At Ometis, we integrate 30+ hospitality data sources into unified dashboards. Your booking system, POS, HR platform and payroll all feed into one view, so you stop jumping between systems trying to piece together what's actually happening. Don't wait until mid-December to discover your systems can't show you what you need. Learn more about our work in hospitality and how we can help you: https://lnkd.in/eE2n3wYN

This quote sums it up perfectly. When you're knee-deep in student retention dashboards or trying to make sense of league table positioning, it's easy to think you're the only one finding it complicated. Turns out everyone's wrestling with similar challenges. You just don't realise it until you're in the same room. That's what I'm looking forward to most about this one - hearing what's actually working at other institutions. Not polished case studies, but the messy reality of implementing new analytics or getting stakeholders to care about data quality. Sessions from Royal Holloway, Abertay, and ARU. Plus some decent content on AI that isn't just buzzwords. Register for free here: https://lnkd.in/e2wXrytR?

Most universities are building their data strategies in isolation. Yet they're all facing the same pressures - league table positioning, student retention analytics, proving ROI on new systems. We're hosting our annual Higher Education conference on November 11th where universities are sharing what's working for them. → Royal Holloway's presenting their AutoML implementation, including the lessons learned. → Abertay's covering their approach to league table data. → ARU's talking about FE insights. Free to attend. November 11th in central London. Register here: https://lnkd.in/d-ZHr4Jb?

Is student data just a box-ticking exercise? I see universities drowning in data. NSS submissions. Module evaluations. Access and participation reports. TEF metrics. It sits in folders meeting regulatory requirements. Meanwhile, 41,900 students dropped out last year. That's nearly 3% of the student population walking away. After decades in recruitment, I've learned rigid criteria miss the best opportunities. Job descriptions demand five years' experience, but sometimes the best hires often had three years and real hunger to learn. Student data works the same way. Universities track attendance and grades. But they miss the nuances. And universities often spot these signals months after they could have helped. Here's what separates institutions that improve student outcomes from those that just tick boxes: 👉 Speed of response to data signals. The data exists to help students succeed. The question is whether universities use it to act or just to report. - Want to see how other universities manage data? 🎓 Join our Higher Education Data Conference on November 11th: https://lnkd.in/d-ZHr4Jb 📥 Message me to book an informal chat about student analytics.