Hospitality industry in the United Kingdom

The hospitality industry in the United Kingdom is largely represented by the country's hotels, pubs, restaurants and leisure companies, and produces around 4% of UK GDP.

[4] The Institute of Hospitality was known as HCIMA - Hotel and Catering International Management Association, which became the IoH in April 2007.

Leicester College claim to be the East Midlands leading training school for catering and food manufacturing.

The University of Surrey moved to its present site in 1968 and was the first in the UK to offer a course for hotel and catering: a BSc in hotel and catering management, with a 48-week professional year starting in the March of the second year; the course was led by Brian Archer from 1978.

Another important place for catering was the Dorset Institute of Higher Education, since 1992 being known as Bournemouth University.

Amanda Willmott had founded two pubs in Birmingham - Carpe Diem and Quo Vadis; this design formed the template for her new design of female-friendly pubs for Bass Inns, known as All Bar One, in February 1994, which first opened in December 1994 in Sutton, London; she went on to form a similar chain Ha!

Beefeater Steak Houses were one of the first chains of restaurants, first opening in July 1974 in Enfield, London; in 1974 its most popular meal was prawn cocktail, rump steak, followed by Black Forest gateau and two glasses of Liebfraumilch German wine; by 1995 it was Britain's largest restaurant chain, with 270 outlets, serving 15 million people per year.

Before it sold Costa Coffee in January 2019, Whitbread, in Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire, was the UK's largest hotel and restaurant group, owning Premier Inn, Brewers Fayre and Beefeater.

Premier Inn was developed and expanded in the 2000s largely during the leadership of Alan C. Parker, the chief executive of Whitbread.

Compass Group, in Chertsey in Surrey, is the largest contract foodservice company in the world.