CEO Dan Brady confronts the realities of 2018 and highlights major opportunities for the sector in 2019. In his own words:
It’s been a big year for Redcape with our ASX listing – it was a big commitment. We have a strong management platform and a lot of support from the Moelis team, which resulted in the successful listing outcome. It did require careful planning and consideration to the application of resources across the organisation. We have highly trained and capable venue teams who have the autonomy and support they need to manage their venues.
We were delighted to be able to structure the Employee Share Plan the way we did. Hotel ownership is difficult these days and being able to provide all Redcape staff with meaningful equity in the business was a great outcome in listing the business.
Three things working really well for us
- We have a strong portfolio of high quality assets, which provide diversity in their offerings to their individual local communities, a stable earnings base across the portfolio and the opportunity for hospitality professionals to gain deep industry experience across all revenue drivers.
- These robust business fundamentals are enhanced by a strong management platform that has made a significant investment in systems, data, customer technologies and talent development over recent years.
- This investment in talent development is also proving rewarding. The development of our people and creating programs that enable young, driven, hospitality professionals to gain a depth of experience across a number of disciplines, as well as gain exposure to broader organisational projects, is something that we believe will allow us to continue to attract high quality business leaders to both Redcape and the industry.
Three challenges we’re taking on
- Taking the business into the listed environment and in doing so, providing people with an opportunity to invest in a sector that is otherwise, for the most part, tightly held.
- Improved social outcomes for the local communities in which we operate through advances in harm minimisation and a greater investment in positive change for good programs like our Publinc Help and Publinc Communities programs.
- Applying our data and technology development that we have invested in over many years to guide how we shape our facilities and customer experiences in our hotels.
Discretionary spending is a challenge for the entire pub industry in 2019
We operate in the entertainment and leisure space and therefore spending is discretionary in nature. The elections, tougher restrictions on private lending and general market sentiment may present some headwinds, although typically the portion of discretionary spend in our sector is small in comparison to other entertainment and leisure alternatives. The challenge for operators will be the speed at which they respond to changes in consumer behaviour as people become more selective about where and how they spend their entertainment dollar among the growing number of options.
We have made a significant investment in data and technologies over recent years and will continue to do so into 2019. Applying this technology in 2019 will enhance the customer experience in our hotels and allow us to respond quickly to changes in customer behaviour and preferences.