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| Hospitality Today Magazine Tough Winter Trading Many operators are reporting that trading is tough this winter. It seems that after five or six years of strong economic growth that the economy is starting to tail off and this is being felt throughout the hospitality sector this year. This has not been helped by winter setting in with a vengeance over June and July. The reality is that there are simply too many hospitality outlets for the size of the New Zealand population. This is great for the New Zealand consumer as they are spoilt for choice with every conceivable type of hospitality outlet being available for their pleasure. Despite that choice and despite continued competitive pricing by hospitality outlets the trend continues to be for consumption of alcohol products to take place away from licenced premises. While this seems to be largely a factor of cheap off-premise pricing, lead largely by supermarkets using alcohol as a loss leader, there is no doubt that the sanitisation of licenced premises by the enforcement agencies is also playing its part. The ongoing campaign by the enforcement agencies which would see licenced premises never serving any patron close to a level of intoxication has the very real danger of making those hospitality venues unattractive places for those patrons. It seems highly ironic that policy’s designed to create very safe licenced premises may in fact be exacerbating the drive for patrons to drink at home in unsupervised environments. The hospitality industry does need to provide safe, supervised environments for its patrons, but maybe it’s time that public policy looked to assist in encouraging people to drink in those safe licenced environments rather than the many unsafe, unsupervised environments. The Government continue to trundle through the review of the sale and supply of alcohol to minors, it is to be hoped that any policy changes resulting from this review will encourage New Zealanders to drink on licenced premises in a safe and friendly environment, rather than driving them away. Bruce H Robertson |
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