Focusing on Hospitality

The Many Opportunities of a New Division

There is a lot more to BITA than construction. We have members from nearly all industries; computing, retail, legal, finance, manufacturing, utilities and hospitality. We work hard to provide our members with services, events, and support that will genuinely benefit their businesses and help them with their plans for growth. The Member Support Hubs (including HR and Mentors) were all developed after listening to our members, as were different networking events. Last year we were approached by a few members who asked us to create a specialist Hospitality Chapter. We have had consultations with this group, which has since grown, and are now ready to launch our Hospitality Division!

Conor O’Donovan from Sefton Hospitality Group is the chair of this new division, and many of you will have met him at BITA events before. He is supported by Marian Cotter of StayCity and Orla O’Leary of Companies Hub (see more about this new venture on page 39), and Alexander Clayton from the Wyndham Grand Algarve hotel. If you would be interested in lending your talents to the board, Ruth@bita.ie would love to hear from you.

Why Hospitality?

Hospitality covers many different businesses. But the industry goes further than hotels and restaurants. Just as the construction industry can benefit from the contacts that they make in marketing, IT, recruitment, insurance and more, so can our hospitality businesses benefit from our connections in the wider business community.

This is also an industry that faces specific challenges. Construction has long had to deal with difficulties from labour and skills shortages, and the hospitality industry now needs to find new paths that will lead to staff, training, and connections.

The aim of the Hospitality Division is to focus on four main areas:

• Improving Skills

• Labour shortage

• Homegrown produce

• Easing exports from outside UK / Ireland

To do this we will be working hard to develop new relationships in different areas that will create a tree of knowledge, experience and connections to help our hospitality members flourish, and that our non-hospitality members can tap into.

Our Aim

It has become clear from our conversations with our members in hospitality that careers within the sector are no longer considered desirable, and people are deciding not to stay in the industry. We want to create a platform and offer the resources for people to tackle these issues.

BITA Divisions

This would not be a chapter of BITA, as chapters are organised by area. A The objective is to ensure that members in the hospitality sector remain in contact with members in BITA from other industries to aid in cross-industry cooperation. Any members of BITA that are involved in hospitality can also be listed in the Hospitality Division.

Next Steps

BITA is planning a presence at hospitality industry events and will be planning online and face to face meetings in 2023. If you would like to be kept up to date about all Hospitality Division news and events, or are interested in joining the board, please contact enquiries@bita.ie