While we saw distress in the late-night market, generally the rate of pub closures slowed.
Christie+Co’s evidence from 2011 concluded that nearly 65% of sold pubs remained as pubs — up from 60% in 2010.
That said, the way the financial markets have begun 2012 hardly promises a return to growth.
Therefore, in this Olympic year, how can the pub sector — especially outside London — guarantee a gold-medal performance?
Perhaps we can look to the hotel sector for a comparison.
As consumer purse-strings tightened in 2011, higher quality hotels in both London and the regions suffered. What Christie+Co saw was customer migration from four and five-star accommodation to more mid-market hotels.
Those hoteliers operating in the mid-market took this opportunity to, in effect, upscale the customer base, using canny marketing to attract the new clientele into their hotels.
While some regional hotels struggled to maintain occupancy levels, others were able to exploit their location and their facilities to offer five-star experiences on a three-star budget.
Pubs can learn to capitalise on upscaling their customer base too. More pertinently, pubs should seek to maximise the customer visit. Keeping customers ‘locked in’ should be central to plans for increased takings — or, for some, survival — in 2012. And the best way to achieve sustainability and growth is excellent customer service.
So what of the Olympics?
Pub operators in London might be expecting a boom year, while those in the regions fear the worst — the truth is probably somewhere halfway.
All of the UK will see a high concentration of visitors in the summer months, but there is certain to be a drop off in demand beyond the extraordinary peak. Moreover, we suspect that many people in London and the south-east will seek to stay away from the Olympic Games.
This could result in much better than anticipated trading performance in the regions as Londoners temporarily migrate to other parts of the UK in order to escape the hubbub.
Of course, if pubs outside London are hoping for a migratory customer boost this summer, they may do well to scale back on plans to offer wall-to-wall televised coverage of the Olympics and any Olympic-themed events!