Hospitality boss warns Dorset businesses could struggle to 'survive'

Until recently, many businesses were expecting this summer to be a relative return to normality after a Covid-impact past couple of years. The war in Ukraine and continuing cost of living challenges have presented new hurdles for local business owners to navigate with pressure continually piling.

The Cossins family has owned The Langton Arms since 1993.

Barbara Cossins, whose family have run The Langton Arms in Tarrant Monkton since 1993, says there’s still a community appetite to back local hospitality but that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

She said: “Of course people want to support local businesses but they just can’t afford to do so as much as they used to. There just isn’t the money at the moment for people to be able to do that on a regular basis… people are having to weigh up heating the home, filling the car or going out for a family meal and, understandably, the meal goes on hold.”

Barbara Cossins Picture: Langton Arms

The concerns come as new research from CGA and Fourth’s Business Leaders’ Survey highlighted only 52% of business leaders feel confident about their recruitment and retention for the next year as hospitality struggles to plug the gap left by the decreasing number of seasonal workers.

It’s an issue that Mrs Cossins says is leaving many businesses on the backfoot: “One of the biggest challenges, for every business, is definitely (recruitment): we lost two members of staff who went to uni in January and just haven’t been able to fill those vacancies. We just can’t get enough people to work in order to meet the demand that will be there over summer.”

It’s estimated that hotels, pubs, restaurants and the wider hospitality employ 33,000 people across the county and contribute £716 million to Dorset’s economy each year. Without further support, however, Mrs Cossins believes many in the industry are at risk of going under.

She said: “Hospitality has been hit the worst and I just honestly don’t know how businesses are meant to survive. No-one knows what’s going to happen in three, six months time so how are you meant to plan ahead?”