The contact layer in UK travel and hospitality: demand, channel economics and the migration nobody has budgeted for.

Fewer people, the same guests, and a deadline in January 2027

UK hospitality employed 20,014 fewer people in December 2025 than in September. Vacancies have fallen to roughly 69,000 from a 2022 peak above 177,000. Guest contact has not fallen with them. This report sets out where that gap sits in the contact layer, and which parts of it are measurable.

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Fewer people, the same guests, and a deadline in January 2027

What's inside

Employment, vacancy and business-count data for UK hospitality, with sources

Channel and distribution economics, and where direct booking share actually sits

The Openreach position: 31 January 2027, and roughly 1.9 million lines still to migrate

A model for sizing unanswered enquiry from data you already hold - four of its five inputs are not published by anyone

What UK law does NOT require that Italy and France do, and why that makes the UK the fastest market to deploy in