The UK hospitality sector directly contributes £93 billion to the economy and employs 3.5 million people. These figures matter for GDP calculations and employment statistics.
The hospitality sector’s broader significance—its role in combating social isolation and sustaining communities—must be foregrounded when government considers how to create conditions for businesses to thrive.
Modern life presents a paradox. Digital connectivity has never been higher, yet studies show many people feel increasingly isolated. The UK’s appointment of a minister for loneliness underscores the seriousness of this issue. While technology enables us to contact anyone worldwide instantly, meaningful in-person interactions are less frequent. Our infrastructure for connection does not guarantee an actual connection.
The hospitality sector addresses not only economic needs but also social isolation, serving as a critical antidote through venues like pubs, cafés, and restaurants. Losing these is not just losing businesses but dismantling the social infrastructure that keeps communities alive.
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg described “third places” as vital spaces outside home and work where community forms. Unlike gyms or supermarkets, where social interaction is limited or transactional, cafés and pubs allow people to build lasting connections and feel recognised as regulars.
What Communities Lose When Venues Close
When a hospitality venue closes, several things happen:
- Communities lose third places where repeated, informal interactions foster connection and build social familiarity outside scheduled activities.
- The local economy loses an anchor business that supports other enterprises—the café that brings foot traffic to the high street, the pub that sustains village viability.
- Young people lose workplaces that help them gain service skills, responsibility, and interpersonal competence—qualities not easily taught in classrooms.
These consequences are not immediately visible in economic statistics. They often emerge years later, reflected in data on mental health and social cohesion, making future interventions more difficult and expensive.
What the Budget Could Address
The forthcoming Budget will reveal whether policymakers appreciate these broader impacts. The stakes include not just an industry, but also the preservation of places where routine social interaction counteracts isolation and community arises from everyday contact.
GDP is easy to quantify. However, the value of a pub where someone finds companionship, a café that offers peer connection for new parents, or a restaurant where teenagers acquire workplace skills is far more difficult to measure.
But difficulty in measurement doesn’t negate importance.
The hospitality sector merits policy support both for its economic role and its function as social infrastructure. These third places help prevent isolation, sustain communal ties, and foster social capital organically.
The Budget is a policy crossroads: the government can choose to back vibrant communities and occupied homes or support policies that encourage investment properties and fragmented social networks.
The policy mechanisms exist. Evidence on social isolation and the role of third places is available. What’s needed is recognition that some infrastructure matters beyond its GDP contribution—and the spaces where people gather, connect, and maintain social ties fall into that category.
The hospitality sector functions as social infrastructure. Policy could begin treating it accordingly.
