The chancellor, the government and the Budget appear to have accidentally wandered into an absolute minefield with this catastrophic error over business rates. But I do believe it was an error and unintended. And that may offer us all a way out.

I have been a member of the Labour Party for 30 years, been deputy leader of a council and stood in a general election. I have many friends and contacts in the current Labour Party. I don’t write that in Propel today to make friends; I fear it will have the opposite effect! I write because I believe I have a feel for the Labour Party.

I genuinely feel it did not intend to land an entire industry with this mess of hugely increasing rateable values. Let’s face it, rateable values and business rates are pretty hard to understand.

I saw a message about “hereditaments and rateable values” on a .government website that is supposed to have a commitment to plain English. This is not an easy area to understand. It’s not easy for the general public and its certainly not easy for government ministers.

But this may be the route to solving this problem. We need, as an industry, to allow the government a victory from this. It can’t be seen to back down on a part of the Budget. The government will be resistant to any element appearing to unravel. So, we need it to be able to claim that we have worked together to find this mistake, have listened and have addressed it.

And when it does, we as an industry must thank it for listening and not be seen to celebrate a victory over the government – but instead, a victory with the government.

This is going to require some delicate diplomacy, but we as an industry need this. The government also needs it. In politics, the Conservatives have always been seen as having a head but not a heart. Labour has been seen as having a heart but not a head. The events of the last few years – Brexit and an assault on our industry – have led to the Tories giving up the mantle of the party of business. Labour is keen to pick that up, and this is an opportunity we can give it.

 

I recently watched the excellent Propel webinar with Mark Wingett, Allen Simpson and Mark Stretton. I highly recommend taking the time to watch this. Allen makes the excellent point that farmers have not been diplomatic, and it has got them nowhere. We can’t play the same tactic and hope for a different outcome.

They also discussed the power of contacting your local MP. Nobody should underestimate the power of an email, letter or phone call while our leaders like my old chief executive, Nick Mackenzie at Greene King, lead the lobbying direct. Everyone should invite their local MP to their pub or pubs. Show them the size of the ecosystem that is under threat – the staff, the food chain, the cleaners, the maintenance, the refuse and recycling, the cab firms that bring customers to and from the pub. MPs, though, are not invited for a photo shoot pulling a pint. 

I urge all landlords and general managers to invite your MP to come to your pub and meet with you and the team. Make sure there is a decent crowd there. Bring in your staff – the people whose jobs are at risk. Invite the landlord or general manager of your nearby competitors. MPs often see only one or two people, so to see a large group is impressive. It shows this is a live issue.

When I ran in 2010, the victims of Equitable Life ran a very successful campaign that involved an “air campaign” in the national papers and a “ground campaign” of groups victims meeting their local candidates. It made a strong case and, as it happened, I was meeting with Alistair Darling (then chancellor of the exchequer) a few days later and was able to raise the issue on its behalf. It had combined a powerful national campaign with local influence. Equitable Life had a few victims in each constituency, but we have dozens of staff in lots of pubs, bars and hotels. 

We have a compelling case to make about the role of the industry in the wider economy. We are a huge employer, and our supply chain keeps alive UK agriculture, farming and food as well the drinks and brewing industry. 

Allen made an excellent point about hospitality being the industry with the largest number of managers without a degree. This is a message that will hit hard with a party passionate about social mobility and progression. I urge everyone to take this message, diplomatically, to your local MP. 

As someone who has spent the last seven years leading a business entirely focused on pre-booked hospitality, I felt it would be remiss – almost churlish – not to respond to Glynn Davis’ recent piece on the “dangers” of pre-booked tables in pubs. I read it with interest, but also with a mounting sense that the argument is rooted in nostalgia more than in the realities of today’s hospitality landscape.

Because put simply, without the rise of pre-booked sales, our pub sector would not be seeing the strength, resilience and like-for-like growth it’s enjoying today. Pre-booking is not a threat; it is a lifeline. And more than that, it’s a strategic tool that allows pubs to trade confidently seven days a week in a world where costs, expectations and behaviours have changed beyond recognition.

One of the few positives that emerged from the pandemic was an industry-wide shift toward planned, predictable trade. It kick-started a behaviour that consumers have fully embraced because it meets the way we now live. The idea that spontaneity has disappeared because of pre-bookings simply doesn’t reflect the data – or the day-to-day reality of how people choose venues. People still walk in; they still turn up on a whim. But they also want the option to lock something in, especially during peak periods or for occasions that matter.

And Christmas? Let’s be honest. December hasn’t been a “spontaneous” month for years. People are organising gatherings earlier and earlier. And the right to choose where you spend those key moments – with the security of knowing you actually have a seat – matters deeply to customers. Removing that choice doesn’t make pubs more charming or traditional; it just makes them riskier to visit.

I completely agree that pubs should keep space for walk-ins, and the best operators absolutely do. But to suggest pre-bookings somehow undermine the pub’s spirit misunderstands both the economics and the evolving skillset behind running a successful site today. Because if there’s one group whose role has transformed the most through this shift, it’s general managers (GM).

The GM job used to be dominated by the operational essentials: safety, P&L, leading from the front and often balancing a FOH/BOH split within a tight structure. Today? That barely scratches the surface. GMs are now expected to be tech-savvy, fluent in multiple product and system integrations, confident with digital marketing, plugged into their local community and able to activate it with events and partnerships. They must understand their booking system inside out, analyse guest behaviour, identify repeat visitors, maximise function space and walk into a shift knowing exactly who is coming in, what capacity they’re starting with and where the revenue opportunities sit.

They are expected to ensure their event spaces are full at least three nights a week. They must strike the balance between predictable pre-booked trade and the welcoming flexibility that keeps long-standing regulars walking back through the door. And they’re doing all this while the cost of doing business rises relentlessly – business rates, national insurance and wage increases, utilities – the list goes on.

The GM role is now vast, and I take my hat off to those embracing it because they are the backbone of this sector. Pre-bookings haven’t made their jobs easier – they’ve made them possible. They’ve given structure, data and commercial clarity to a role that increasingly demands all three.

And let’s be very clear – pre-booking is not just about revenue for operators; it is about security for customers. We live in a world where I can order something on Amazon at 9am and receive it the same afternoon. That expectation of convenience and certainty is now part of how we all behave. People want to know they have a table. They want the reassurance that their night is sorted. And pubs that offer that are meeting consumers where they already are.

If pubs could survive on three or four busy sessions a week, many would, but they can’t. I have family in Somerset. I’ve watched beautiful, once-loved pubs become derelict, and it’s heartbreaking. Not one of those sites had a strong culture of pre-booked trade, structured sales focus or local marketing discipline. The belief that “people will just walk in” is no longer a viable business strategy in most towns and cities.

Meanwhile, look at the companies Glynn cites – Fuller’s, Young’s and Greene King. Their commitment to bookings hasn’t eroded pub culture; it has safeguarded it. It has created sales roles, progression opportunities and new internal pathways at a time when hospitality desperately needs long-term careers to remain attractive. At Bums on Seats, we’ve trained many of these teams, and the talent across the sector right now is phenomenal. The industry should be proud of them.

Most importantly, I have yet to see genuine customer dissatisfaction with the availability of reservations. Quite the opposite: guests want them and they expect them. They value knowing that their time, their celebrations and their money are respected through a simple confirmation email.

The pub hasn’t lost its soul. It has adapted – beautifully, bravely and intelligently – to consumer behaviour, economic realities and the future of hospitality. Pre-bookings aren’t the enemy of spontaneity; they are the infrastructure that allows spontaneity to exist alongside sustainability. And for that, we should be celebrating, not resisting, the shift.

What do we call all the tasks that we have to do as a business that are outside of service? Non-service tasks? Fixed tasks? At S4labour, we call them admin (management tasks) and prep (getting ready, either front of house or back of house). But what are these tasks, when should we do them and how much time do they take? Let’s take each in turn.

 

There are a few examples I can use here to highlight the challenge of even defining the tasks. Do we treat cutlery polishing as prep (for the next day), or is it a task to be done during service? What about stacking glass or the dishwasher? Some days, you are better to run short and do these tasks after service, but on other days, they might need to be in-service tasks – either because you need the teapots or because there isn’t the space to stack the dirties.

 

So, we will all have different versions of what we might call prep tasks, some of which will be service tasks and included within the deployment graphs, and some of which aren’t.

 

I think kitchen prep will have a more uniform definition – that is anything that needs to be done to be ready for service. But even then, the devil is in the detail. Let’s take our traditional Sunday roast. Most of the work – cooking the potatoes or making the gravy – is a prep task, but we might classify it as a service task. Once the potatoes are in the tray, the workload for service is low as they just need to go in the oven and get shaken occasionally to brown evenly all over. The skill is in putting the potatoes in the oven at the right time to come out and get used fast enough not to go soft. And the gravy is hopefully just bubbling on the hob, low enough so it doesn’t catch on the bottom, but ready to be ladled onto the plate or into the jug.

 

So much of a Sunday lunch moves from substantially service to substantially prep – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t do their Yorkshires ahead of service. Even most of a burger might be prep – with the tomato, lettuce, cheese and gherkin all ready to go, and with only assembly and grilling required during service.

 

Once the tasks are defined, when should we do them? We have developed a successful methodology of slack tasks and fixed tasks, trying to split each into a task that can be done when we are quiet, rather than someone being given specific hours to cover it. Once we understand how team capability is measured, we also understand that there is in-built slack.

 

I asked one of our consultants what proportion of tasks should be slack, and his answer was all of them! I like the intent, but I still think line cleaning, pre-opening and a few others are fixed tasks, even if we can move some of them to the middle of the day or the middle of service.

 

Once you have decided what the tasks are, and whether they are fixed or slack, you need to decide how long they take. If you sell 1,000 burgers a day, it is probably worth measuring how long it takes to get the tomato from the packet to the service line. I once did some work for an airport where laying the bacon on the trays to get cooked was a four-hour job every day. And, if we go back to front of house, how long it takes to do recruitment every week is a difficult call but still needs an estimate.

 

But the most important and difficult decision is deciding when to do them. Are they a slack task, to be done when there is a quiet time during service, or a fixed task, as a designated activity with a time set against it? It is easier for the team to create fixed tasks (please come in early to look at all the emails), than create a slack task (please go on the bar in the afternoon and do your emails at the same time).

 

And this is the challenge that we can’t ignore; fixed tasks are damaging our industry. We are at the point now where because the cost of labour is so high that we can’t ignore all these small, difficult but important changes that together make a massive difference to our businesses. So, take the first step.

 

The loyalty landscape in UK hospitality has shifted faster in the last few years than it did in the decade before. 2025 saw a wave of new apps from Côte, Prezzo, ASK and Heartwood Inns, which shows how seriously operators now treat loyalty. The foundations are in place. The challenge for 2026 is not building the app; it is proving that all the data flowing into these platforms can create real commercial impact and a richer guest experience.

For years, loyalty was built around pounds and points. While still powerful for quick service restaurants and cafes, in the world of restaurants, guests want something more meaningful. They want to feel remembered. They want brands to show they understand them. They want relevance without having to hunt for it. The brands that rise to the top will be the ones that turn data into something that feels personal at every interaction.

Using AI, data and personalisation with purpose

Most operators now have more data than they know what to do with. The biggest trap in 2026 will be collecting even more of it without a plan for how to use it. Value does not come from volume; it comes from knowing what matters. Operators that win will understand the key signals that drive behaviour and then build their journeys around those signals.

This is where AI becomes essential. Not as a shiny tool, but as the engine that helps you interpret behaviour at scale and act on it with precision. Personalised marketing is the obvious starting point. Guests engage when the message fits their habits, preferences and intent. In 2026, this will not be a nice-to-have. It will be the minimum standard for any loyalty strategy that wants to stand out.

But the real opportunity sits beyond marketing. The brands that get ahead will be the ones that can create a single view of each guest across every channel. Every booking. Every order. Every visit. Every email. Every digital interaction. Right now, these touchpoints often sit in silos, which means the experience feels disjointed.

The guest is the same person everywhere. They expect the brand to recognise them everywhere. This is the shift coming next year. Loyalty will become fully omnichannel. The intelligence inside loyalty apps will start powering experiences far beyond the app environment.

Marketing teams often sit on rich guest insights that never reaches the people delivering service day to day. This is a huge missed opportunity. When a guest walks through the door, your team should know if it is their first visit or their 15th. They should know if this is someone who celebrates milestones with you or someone who always orders the same drink. They should know if the guest had a poor experience last time and needs reassurance.

This is not about scripts or gimmicks. It is about giving teams confidence and context so they can deliver warmer and more human experiences. Personalisation delivered by people is always stronger than personalisation delivered by algorithms alone.

The smartest operators will use AI and data to elevate their teams. The magic happens when technology removes the guesswork so teams can focus on hospitality. This is where loyalty becomes something guests feel rather than something they collect.

Gamification is set for a big leap forward next year. Not the basic version of badges and stamps, but the more valuable version which encourages real actions that build community. Sharing moments. Bringing friends. Referring new guests. Supporting causes. Celebrating milestones. When done well, it adds energy to the experience and deepens emotional connection.

These actions also fuel organic reach, which every operator needs. A well-designed gamified journey can turn guests into advocates. That advocacy becomes a growth engine far more powerful than any discount-based mechanic.

As we head into 2026, the winners will be the brands that operationalise loyalty, not just advertise it. Data. Channels. Teams. Technology. Guest insight. Real world hospitality. Those who make loyalty feel effortless for the guest and natural for the team. They will treat loyalty not as an app, but as a strategy for long term relationships.

We now have the platforms and we have the data. The next step is using them with intent. The brands that do will build deeper relationships and stronger commercial returns that competitors will struggle to match.