Hampshire hospitality in 2026: what the figures show

"Bounce back" is an easy headline for hospitality, and the official figures do not quite support it. They show a trade that has changed shape since 2020: more restaurants and takeaways, fewer pubs and bars, and fewer people on the payroll in the latest year counted. Owners say they are a little more hopeful than they were in the summer, and costs are still the worry.

This article sets out what the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the trade's own surveys say, for Hampshire where the figures exist and for the UK where they do not. It ends with the part that touches this site: the hotels, pubs and cafés that host the county's breakfasts, lunches and awards evenings.

Counting the places: more kitchens, fewer bars

Each September the ONS publishes a count of every business site registered for VAT or PAYE. The 2026 edition, counted in March 2026, found 3.2 million sites across the UK, up 1.6% on 2025.

Pull out the hospitality lines for the Hampshire County Council area (which leaves out Southampton and Portsmouth, as the ONS counts them separately) and compare March 2026 with March 2020:

• Food and beverage service sites: 3,410, up from 3,130.
• Restaurants and mobile food service: 1,900, up from 1,655.
• Beverage serving (pubs and bars): 840, down from 895.
• Accommodation: 395, the same as in 2020, with hotels and similar accommodation also unchanged at 205.

So the county has roughly 280 more places to eat than it did six years ago, and 55 fewer places whose main trade is drink. The cities follow a similar line on food. Southampton had 780 food and beverage sites in March 2026 against 685 in 2020; Portsmouth had 760 against 730. Pubs and bars held roughly level in Southampton (135 against 130) and fell in Portsmouth (155 against 170).

England as a whole shows the same split: food and beverage sites rose from 160,060 to 171,700 over the same years, while beverage serving fell from 39,090 to 37,270. Hampshire's pubs are following a national pattern, not a local one.

Counting the people: a dip in 2024

Sites are only half of it. The ONS Business Register and Employment Survey counts employees, and its latest results, published in October 2025, are provisional figures for 2024. For the Hampshire County Council area they show:

• about 38,000 employees in food and beverage service in 2024, down from about 42,000 in 2023;
• about 10,000 in accommodation in 2024, down from about 12,000 in 2023;
• about 616,000 employees across all industries in 2024.

The ONS rounds these local counts, and they cover employees only, not the self-employed or owners. Even so, hospitality employed a little under one in twelve of the county's employees in 2024, and the direction between 2023 and 2024 was down.

What brings people to the county

Hospitality in Hampshire leans on visitors as well as locals. Tourism South East, which leads the Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton Local Visitor Economy Partnership with the county and city councils, gives these figures for 2022, the latest it publishes there:

• about 3.2 million overnight trips to Hampshire, 87% of them by visitors from within the UK;
• "around £902.9 million" spent by overnight visitors on those trips;
• about 27.5 million day trips.

Those are visitor figures rather than business-event figures, but the same rooms serve both. A hotel that fills with walkers and wedding guests at the weekend often relies on weekday trade, and a morning meeting room or a lunch for forty is part of that.

How owners feel: more hopeful, still squeezed

The trade's mood is tracked by surveys of operators rather than by the ONS. The Business Confidence Survey from NIQ and Zonal, carried out in August and September 2026 among leaders overseeing more than 15,000 UK sites and published on 26 October 2026, found:

• 53% of leaders optimistic about their own business over the next 12 months;
• 28% optimistic about the future of hospitality as a whole, up seven points over the quarter;
• 84% concerned about inflation in food and drink;
• 68% reporting higher gas and electricity prices in the previous three months.

These are UK figures, not Hampshire ones, and no equivalent county survey is published. They match what the site counts suggest: businesses are open and trading, and margins are tight.

Business rates changed in April

One change applies to almost every pub, café and hotel in the county. From 1 April 2026, new business rates multipliers apply to retail, hospitality and leisure properties in England: 38.2p for those with a rateable value under £51,000 and 43p for those between £51,000 and £499,999. The government says they replace the temporary retail, hospitality and leisure relief, which was 40% in 2025 to 2026. What any one business pays depends on its own rateable value after the 2026 revaluation, so the council's bill is the figure to check.

What this means if you're going to events

Most business events in Hampshire happen in hospitality venues: a hotel function room for a breakfast group, a pub's back room for an evening social, a golf club or a country house for an awards dinner. A few practical points follow from the figures above:

• Book, and cancel if you can't make it. A venue plans breakfasts and lunches on numbers. With food prices the top worry for operators, a no-show costs the host.
• Buy something. Many socials with no ticket price happen in pubs and cafés that make their money from the bar or the coffee. The no ticket price list is a good place to start, and the room still has to pay its way.
• Try a different room. Hotels such as Burley Manor, Bartley Lodge Hotel, Chewton Glen and the Solent Hotel and Spa all appear on the calendar as hosts of business events, alongside pubs, cafés and community centres. Each venue page covers parking, trains, buses and access.
• Hosts are guests too. Hotel and restaurant owners go to networking events to meet suppliers and to fill their rooms. Several breakfast groups take one member per trade, so ask before you assume there is no space.

If you run a venue and want to host a business event, host events explains how listings reach the calendar.

Where to start

The listings below are some of the hotel and restaurant events on the calendar, as listed on hampshire.events. For more, browse breakfasts, lunches, after-work events and the Christmas networking page, or start from your town: Southampton, Portsmouth, Basingstoke or the New Forest. Check details with the organiser before you go.