Happy New Year - My Hospitality wish list for 2025
As 2025 rolls around, let’s all raise a glass towards it being a year for betterment - because, after all, don’t we want to be better? Don’t we desire improvement – and I don’t just mean higher sales figures, better profit margins and increased stock prices? When we look at hospitality, we’ve seen that 2024 has been a mixed bag. Certainly, I have. My experiences throughout the year have ranged from the spectacular to the ghastly. So, here’s my hospitality wish list for 2025 – the things that I’d like to see the industry adopt, or at least work towards.
Is it just me, or has that signature Sri Lankan warmth largely diminished? Walk into a restaurant, check into a hotel, or stroll through a shop, and you might notice that staff seem to be particularly distant. This was none more apparent than at the main restaurant of the ‘Dream City’, where I treated my parents to an Anniversary Dinner back in November. The dinner was memorable, mostly for the wrong reasons, but a lack of Sri Lankan warmth was definitely one of them. That’s why I’d like to see hospitality establishments re-look at whether their staff are genuinely projecting that signature warmth. Mystery shopper guest audits are one way to do this.
Stop Asking Me To Download An App For Everything!
Apps, apps, apps. There’s an app for everything – I’m sure it will only be a matter of time where I’ll need to use an app in a public place to book a stall in a washroom! In fact, I’ve reached “app saturation” – that point where, I will consider downloading an app only if it really provides me with long-lasting value. I wouldn’t download an app for a shop, restaurant or hotel that I’d probably use once or twice at most. If I need to use an App, make sure it’s pretty damn good
What’s worse than needing to use an app is an app that’s poorly created? I’ve encountered this with the app for a popular shopping mall in Colombo 5. Having eagerly downloaded it, in anticipation of being able to convert my purchases into points and then use those to pay for parking, I was immediately stymied. I couldn’t even get past the registration screen without the app crashing and closing. Funny: because none of the other apps on my phone have such issues. My phone isn’t anything special either, just a garden variety Redmi with Android 14. So, if you really must force your customers to use an app, at least make sure that it can perform its basic duties. Drinking water should be a basic right – not a paid privilege
You really have to be stingy to ask your customers to pay for a glass of clean drinking water. I believe that this reflects rock bottom in the relentless pursuit of profits over anything and everything else. In fact, it should be made a legal or statutory requirement that all F&B establishments must provide clean drinking water – hot, cold, and room temperature, for free, when requested. I say this, because at the famous Dream City I referred to earlier in this article, only hot water was ‘complimentary’. Any other drinking water would have to be purchased, in a fancy bottle, at… a fancy price.
So that’s my wish-list for 2025. I can write a whole lot more, but I don’t want to start off the year sounding like a total wet blanket. The truth is, we, as a country have a lot more potential than we tend to give ourselves credit for – or care to explore.
May 2025 be a year of betterment, a year of learning, and a year of exploring.
Happy New Year!
Ashraaq Wahab - Director of Sales & Marketing and Technical - Hospitality Sri Lanka, Automotive Journalist, Marketer, Photographer and Writer, who enjoys penning his thoughts, insights and ideas on a variety of topics.
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