ABSTRACT
Wages and salaries in the UK hospitality industry have long been a focus of criticism of the industry as an employer.
One of the problems for the hospitality industry and its pay levels is that, relatively speaking, each employee does not generate large sums of revenue for the employer. In hotels, for example, a Plimsoll analysis (Hospitality, February 1998) showed that hotel and restaurant staff on average generated around £50,000 per annum per employee. Using BHA figures the actual figure in 2004 was around £36,000 including part-timers (Trends and Statistics 2004, BHA, 2004). From this the employer has to pay all costs, including materials, labour, debt financing and tax. Such levels of sales per employee do not leave much room for significant increases, particularly when compared to other industries where each employee may generate hundreds of thousands of pounds each year.
