The Six Steps Every Hospitality Business Can Take to Build a Fairer, More Inclusive Workplace

New Better Hospitality report turns employee research and insight from senior leaders representing 80,000+ employees into practical roadmap for industry change

London, 28 September 2026: Be Inclusive Hospitality has launched Better Hospitality, a report with an ambition to build fairer, stronger, more inclusive workplaces across the hospitality sector, with a particular focus on race and ethnicity.

Better Hospitality is built around three connected elements: evidence, expertise and action. It combines a 405-strong anonymous employee survey, insight from senior leaders from some of the industry’s biggest and most respected brands - representing more than 80,000 employees across 2,800+ UK sites - alongside real-world case studies and six practical priorities as a path toward change.

Against a backdrop of rising employment costs and a difficult trading environment for hospitality operators, employees across a range of identities, career levels and lengths of service shared their experiences of pay, career progression and workplace culture.

• 57.3% of respondents say high employee turnover is a direct result of unfairness and exclusion, with 38% saying unfairness and exclusion directly contributes to people leaving the hospitality industry altogether

• Half of respondents (50.1%) say their employers show little or no meaningful action on fairness and inclusion

• 21.1% of respondents from ethnic minority backgrounds say they believe that they have been overlooked for progression because of their identity, compared with 6.4% of white respondents. This was more than three times the proportion of white respondents.

The senior leaders who contributed their insights formed the Better Hospitality Leadership Group. The group brought together senior leaders from hotels, restaurants, pubs, contract catering, training providers and industry bodies, representing organisations at different stages of their inclusion work.

The employee survey and expertise of the leadership group surfaced the same six priorities. Each priority has a clear ambition of where the sector should be heading, and practical actions employers can take to get there.

Data is the first priority and sits at the heart of Better Hospitality. Without understanding who specifically your employees are and their experiences throughout the employee lifecycle, employers cannot identify where disparities might exist or track the effectiveness of actions taken. The other five priorities Better Hospitality sets out include resource, training, representation, policy and collaboration. The six priorities are brought to life in the report with case studies outlining the actions and outcomes that are being realised across the sector.

Ultimately, Better Hospitality is a call to action; because change happens when the industry moves together. Employers are invited to become Better Hospitality signatories, committing publicly to the six priorities and the action they’re taking. Leaders looking for peer-to-peer learning, guidance and networking can also join the Better Hospitality Leadership Committee.

Lorraine Copes, Founder & CEO of Be Inclusive Hospitality, says: “I have spent my entire career in hospitality for a reason. This industry has the power to create opportunities, build careers and change lives. It is also one of the UK’s most diverse and dynamic industries. Yet a diverse workforce does not automatically mean that everyone feels included or has fair access to opportunity. I created Better Hospitality to help address that gap and move the industry’s work on people and workplace culture forward. It is designed for businesses of all sizes, wherever they operate.

This is an opportunity to build a fairer, stronger and more inclusive hospitality industry. Our six priorities provide a shared direction, and the Better Hospitality Leadership Committee will help employers work through how to put them into practice.”

The full Better Hospitality report, including all survey data, is available to download free of charge at https://bihospitality.co.uk/reports-and-insights/

Lorraine Copes, Founder & CEO of Be Inclusive Hospitality, is available for interview, comment, profiles, Op-Eds and speaker opportunities.

Notes to editors:

Images & report: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12KW0Ujsj47uCc-kPvoH_HMOI5Xkx13M6?usp=sharing

About the research: Better Hospitality is Be Inclusive Hospitality’s sixth research project since 2020. The anonymous employee survey was conducted in May 2026 and gathered 405 responses on questions regarding pay, progression and workplace experience across the UK hospitality workforce.

About Be Inclusive Hospitality (BIH): Be Inclusive Hospitality is a not-for-profit social enterprise with a mission to accelerate inclusion and belonging across the hospitality industry. Specialising in race and ethnicity, BIH supports a community of over 1,000 hospitality professionals across the UK. Founded by Lorraine Copes in 2020, BIH was born out of a clear need to address the underrepresentation of ethnic minority talent within leadership roles and across the supply chain, and the organisation builds on her distinguished career spanning over 20 years in the industry. BIH drives action through research, empowers its community through funded initiatives, and partners with organisations committed to fostering inclusion www.bihospitality.co.uk / @beinclusivehospitality

About Lorraine Copes: Lorraine Copes, Founder & CEO of Be Inclusive Hospitality, is a highly respected industry expert on the hospitality industry, inclusion and the business case for change, with a particular focus on race and ethnicity. Her previous leadership experience includes executive board roles at Gordon Ramsay Restaurants, Shake Shack and The Wolseley Group.

For further information please contact Claire Felstead via CFelstead@bihospitality.co.uk.

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