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Research
GO Technology: Why 6:12pm is the new 8pm
Fact Sheet: Click & Collect
Tap into an additional revenue stream and allow your customers to engage
with your brand from their own homes. Click & Collect is fully integrated
with, and driven by, Zonal’s EPoS, removing the need for your team to reenter order information or update online menus if products go out of stock –
eliminating the manual headaches that can come with implementing additional
ordering channels
Pub Accommodation Review 2025
Exclusive research into consumer and operator sentiment towards the UK pub accommodation sector, produced in partnership with CGA by NIQ, Stay In a Pub, and VisitEngland.
Amidst high demand for UK accommodation, there’s huge growth potential for UK pubs to boost revenue by making rooms a core part of their offering.
Whether it’s a friendly welcome, high quality food and drink, or a more relaxed, welcoming atmosphere, a stay in a pub holds broad appeal for many consumers. But what are the key factors that influence guests in choosing to book a stay in a pub? How can pubs with rooms reach more guests? And what are the potential barriers causing guests to choose to stay elsewhere?
This report, produced in partnership with CGA by NIQ, Stay In a Pub, and VisitEngland, provides an in-depth exploration of current guest sentiment towards the UK pub accommodation sector from both guests and businesses; identifying where the opportunity lies for pubs that invest in accommodation, as well as the view from pub accommodation operators.
What's in the report?
- What guests want from their stay in a pub
- How are guests choosing where to stay?
- How operators can capitalise on the pub accommodation opportunity
- The top challenges facing pub accommodation providers
Explore our full consumer research series
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Research
Pub Accommodation Review 2025
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GO Technology: Hotels and consumers – Guest expectations and how to meet them
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GO Technology: Consumers and hospitality: 2024 in review
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GO Technology: The truth behind no-shows
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GO Technology: Brand loyalty in hospitality
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Research
GO Technology: Fixing people’s hospitality bugbears
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Research
GO Technology: The value of hospitality – Exploring consumer insights and perceptions
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The top 5 latest Order & Pay features to help you reduce overhead and boost efficiency
With the upcoming National Insurance Contribution (NIC) increase, we understand the growing pressure on hospitality businesses to manage overhead and reduce operational costs. To help your team focus more delivering exceptional guest experiences — and less on manual tasks — our Customer Success Team has highlighted the latest key features released for our Order & Pay solution designed to streamline workflows, reduce staff intervention and drive efficiency across your operation.
Enhance the guest experience with table-specific QR codes
Our GO Technology research revealed that payment experiences are among the top 10 consumer frustrations. The key bugbears include having to wait to receive and settle the bill (77%) and being unable to split the bill (64%).
Traditionally, this stage of the customer journey required staff involvement, however with table-specific QR codes that link to an ordering journey, this process becomes effortless. Each code is pre-configured with the correct venue and table number, allowing guests to access a seamless ordering and payment journey directly from their smartphones.
A quick scan gives guests two simple options:
- Order & Pay: Instantly browse the menu and place orders without needing to select the venue or table. Fast, intuitive, and hassle-free.
- Pay My Bill: View and settle the bill in just a few taps, no staff assistance needed.
The table-specific QR code eliminates friction, reduces staff workload, and keeps service flowing — ideal for high-traffic, fast-paced venues. By empowering guests to manage their own orders and payments, operators can boost efficiency, improve table turnover, and deliver a smoother, more enjoyable experience for every guest.
Enable guest checkout to provide a frictionless guest journey
Perfect for guests who prefer not to create an account, log in, or download an app, our web-based interface enables quick and easy ordering in just a few taps without requiring guests to sign up for an account which can sometimes be time consuming or require additional staff support. This streamlined approach is ideal for fast-paced, quick-service environments — allowing guests to place their orders quickly and easily while still receiving an email receipt.
The result? A frictionless experience for your guests and reduced operational complexity for your team.
Effortless bill splitting for a smoother payment experience
Splitting the bill at the end of a meal can often be time-consuming and prone to mistakes when done manually. Our Order & Pay solution simplifies the process, offering guests flexible, easy-to-use bill-splitting options — all from their own device.
With just a few taps, guests can choose how they’d like to settle the bill:
- Pay in full: Instantly cover the outstanding balance and proceed straight to payment.
- Split evenly: Divide the total bill between 2 to 99 guests, with automatic rounding for any tricky pennies.
- Pay a custom amount: Contribute a specific amount toward the bill, perfect for groups or shared orders.
This feature helps to remove some of the hassle of manual calculations, eliminates errors, and gives guests complete flexibility — ensuring a seamless end to their dining experience.
This flexibility reduces the need for staff involvement in calculating and processing payments, thus lowering overheads. Additionally, guests can opt to add a tip before completing their payment, streamlining the entire transaction process. Once the payment is made, a confirmation message is displayed, and an email receipt is sent to the guest.
Mobile order manager enhancements
The latest update to our mobile ordering manager platform offers several features to enhance operational flexibility and reduce overheads:
- Order mode control: Specific order modes can now be enabled or disabled (e.g., Click & Collect) at the site or sales area level, streamlining the process of managing different service options without requiring manual intervention from multiple teams.
- Menu category control: Specific menu categories can now be enabled or disabled, offering greater control over menu availability and reducing unnecessary labour costs.
- Snooze functionality: Order modes or menu categories can now be ‘snoozed’ for a set period (e.g., during peak times), automatically reverting to normal operation after the snooze period ends. This reduces the need for constant manual adjustments and minimises disruptions in service.
- Sales area-level wait times: Custom wait times for specific sales areas can now be set, helping manage customer expectations and ensuring smoother operations during busy periods.
Improved reporting and user management
Several enhancements have been introduced to streamline the process for managing team member permissions and auditing changes made within Mobile Ordering Manager. These include:
Increased Reporting Frequency & Scope: Mobile Ordering Manager’s interaction reports are now run daily, providing head office staff with more timely insights into site-level operations. This enables quicker action to address any negative behaviours, such as disabling online ordering during peak times.
Self-Management of Users: Create, edit, and delete users directly within the platform. This accelerates user management tasks and empowers site managers to operate more efficiently.
By implementing these innovative features and functionalities, Order & Pay can significantly reduce overhead costs and improve operational efficiency. These solutions not only enhance guest experiences but also minimise manual interventions, automate processes, and provide greater control over day-to-day operations. As a result, operators can reduce labour costs, optimise workflows, and improve overall profitability.
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Hotels and consumers: Guest expectations and how to meet them in 2025
This exclusive research report explores consumers’ engagement with the UK hotel market, what they expect during their stay, and how hoteliers can make the most of the opportunity.
Both domestically and abroad, the demand for accommodation remains high, with 78% of consumers having stayed in a hotel in 2024.
But guests’ engagement with hotels is evolving. With more discovery tools at their disposal than ever, and plenty of choice when it comes to the type of accommodation they want to stay in, it’s vital for hoteliers and operators to understand guest behaviour to stay ahead of the game.
This report, produced in partnership with CGA by NIQ, surveyed over 3,000 British consumers to provide a deep dive into what it is guests are looking for when booking a stay in a hotel; including how often, and for what reasons, guests are staying in UK hotels, their engagement with F&B during their stay, and the factors that influence their choice of hotel when booking a stay.
What's in the report?
- The top five visit trends for UK hotels
- The top reasons guests are visiting hotels
- How guests are deciding where to stay, and factors influencing their decisions
- Guests’ engagement with hotel F&B during their stay
Explore our full consumer research series
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Research
GO Technology: Why 6:12pm is the new 8pm
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Research
Pub Accommodation Review 2025
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Research
GO Technology: Hotels and consumers – Guest expectations and how to meet them
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GO Technology: Consumers and hospitality: 2024 in review
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GO Technology: The truth behind no-shows
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GO Technology: Brand loyalty in hospitality
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GO Technology: Fixing people’s hospitality bugbears
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GO Technology: The value of hospitality – Exploring consumer insights and perceptions
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Roseacre Pub Co joins up operations and lays the foundations for growth with Zonal’s EPoS
Introducing Roseacre Pub Company
Collection of 9 pubs across the midlands
Premium pubs and restaurants serving high quality food and drink
Founded in 2014
Celebrating 10th anniversary in 2024
“When we were looking for a new till provider, we were looking for a POS provider that had everything under one umbrella. We were looking for slick POS tills that could support with high volume, integrated card machines, a cash management system, e-commerce improvement and CRM data collection systems”Ash Gartshore, Owner, Roseacre Pub Company
The business challenge
With an aim of delivering an excellent food and drink offering, accompanied by friendly, caring service across their collection of 9 pubs, the Roseacre Pub Company team sought out a technology partner that could help them achieve this consistently across each of their pubs, and deliver the best value to their customers.
The business was also experiencing a period of growth, with more pubs coming into the fold and plans for additional sites across the next few years, meaning choosing a provider that could support them as they scaled, easily incorporating new sites into the estate was vital.
The Roseacre team were also looking for a provider that could offer multiple connected systems under one umbrella to help them better join up operations, streamline cash management, consolidate reporting and better understand their customers across their entire estate to reduce admin and drive revenue.
“Zonal is so easy to use on a day-to-day basis, and the back office platform is really intuitive to use. It actually allows sites to be more independent, and there’s other members of the head office team now who can support day-to-day. It’s really empowered them to progress their careers.”Andy Griffin, Head of Systems, Roseacre Pub Company
The solution
With these criteria in mind, the team at Roseacre Pub Company did their research and chose Zonal as their technology provider, working together to complete a phased implementation across their 9 pubs, managed carefully by our dedicated onboarding team.
Since making the switch day-to-day operations have been simplified across Roseacre’s estate of pubs – especially in relation to cashing up. Detailed, real-time reporting is available across the business to help resolve any queries that may arise, giving the team the tools to dig into the detail easily and make more effective decisions, quicker.
Utilising the data collected in their EPoS, the Roseacre team are also able to refine elements of their offering to drive additional revenue; analysing individual performance of products and ingredients, as well as products that are commonly purchased alongside these dishes, allowing them to tweak their menus and recommend upsells throughout the ordering journey.
Having intuitive, easy-to-use technology in place has allowed different sites within the business to operate more independently, as well as enabled more members of their head office team to progress their careers and upskill by supporting in more areas of the day-to-day operations of their pubs.
- Industry-leading EPoS for pubs, complete with a powerful stock management solution as standard
- Zonal’s online guest ordering solution Order & Pay, fully integrated with our EPoS, enabling customers to order and pay for food and drink from the comfort of their own table
“It’s important to me that Roseacre always grows, but growth doesn’t always mean more sites. It means growth in technology, growth in engagement and growth in our people. There will be more sites in 2024 and 2025, and I look forward to working closely with Zonal to support that growth.”Ash Gartshore, Owner, Roseacre Pub Company
Results
Featured solutions
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Shorefield Holidays reduces inventory management costs and boosts guest experiences with connected tech from Zonal
Introducing Shorefield Holidays
Family-run business
Established 1958
Award-winning holiday park operator
Collection of 9 parks across Dorset & Hampshire
“While we were looking for a new technology solution, we were looking for something that would be more integrated across the board, a cost saving for us as a business, and be able to take us to the next step.”Ryan Swatridge, Group Entertainments Manager, Shorefield Holidays
The business challenge
With a drive to deliver unforgettable experiences for their guests, owners and residents; as well as to join up their technology across their parks to deliver better integration and facilitate cost savings, Shorefield Holidays began the search for a technology partner that could help take them to the next level.
They needed a technology partner that would help them grow and expand, as well as deliver live, day-to-day insight over areas such as stock levels to enable more effective decision-making, something they were lacking at the time. The Shorefield team also wanted to be able to better understand their guests, including spending patterns, so technology that provided easy-to-digest and detailed reporting on how guests were engaging with the business was vital.
The system needed to be hospitality-dedicated, and ultimately make life easier for their guests and staff.
“Technology is a huge part of our business, from the iServes to the app, the loyalty, we massively embraced what Zonal brought to us. We’re just looking at different ways we can bring technology to what we do, we even have robots in our restaurant that will serve you your dinner.”Ryan Swatridge, Group Entertainments Manager, Shorefield Holidays
The solution
With a set of requirements and criteria in mind, the Shorefield team began researching different technology suppliers, as well as what their competitors were doing, and as a result chose to work with Zonal to implement a suite of connected hospitality technology across their parks to meet their business’s objectives.
With Zonal’s industry-leading EPoS at the core of their restaurants, the Shorefield team have since benefitted from real-time, accurate stock monitoring via Zonal’s built-in stock management module, enabling them to reduce costs on external stock counts. Zonal’s handheld EPoS ordering solution for staff, iServe, was also implemented, enabling staff to take orders at the tableside and automatically sending these through for fulfilment helping to improve guest experiences through speedier service and eliminating any room for errors, whilst providing significant time savings for staff by removing the need for orders to be re-keyed.
Alongside Zonal’s EPoS, the Shorefield team also chose to implement our purchase-to-pay inventory management solution, Acquire. With an end-to-end purchasing platform in place, fully integrated with their EPoS, the team have transformed their inventory management, enabling them to manage all of their suppliers and purchasing in one central platform, as well as reducing staff overhead by eliminating the need for their team to spend hours logging delivery notes and invoices.
“The difference is night and day; the money it’s saving us in not running multiple different platforms, and time it’s saving the team, and the fact that it’s just modernised us as a business.”Chris Weymouth, Assistant Complex Manager – Oakdene Forest Park, Shorefield Holidays
To further enhance their guest experience, Shorefield implemented Zonal’s Order & Pay app across their estate of holiday parks. Zonal worked with both the Shorefield operations and marketing teams to develop their app into exactly what they wanted it to be, including delivery to location functionality to enable guests to place orders for delivery to their accommodation – providing guests with convenience and flexibility.
All the functionality is backed up by Zonal’s robust suite of reporting. With Zonal’s integrated tech in place, the Shorefield team are able to drill down into more detail than ever, including a granular view of GP margins for every recipe item, helping them to expose any inefficiencies or fluctuations, and react accordingly.
- Industry-leading EPoS for holiday parks, complete with a robust stock management solution and real-time data capture
- Handheld ordering devices for staff to speed up service times and reduce room for error
- A fully-integrated purchase-to-pay solution, enabling the Shorefield team to centralise purchasing and supplier management, reducing costs and saving staff time
- A branded, feature-rich customer app, fully-integrated with their EPoS, to give guests more control over their dining experience during their stay, complete with deliver to location functionality to enable delivery straight to their cabins
- Robust, detailed reporting across their entire technology ecosystem, providing the necessary insight to help the Shorefield team to make more effective decisions
“You can see on the sales and profitability reports the GP margins for every recipe item, which means you can really expose any small problems you’re having with the fluctuation of figures. It gives you the ability to push that GP as much as you can.”Chris Weymouth, Assistant Complex Manager – Oakdene Forest Park, Shorefield Holidays
Results
Featured solutions
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Fixing people's hospitality bugbears
What are consumers' top frustrations in hospitality, and how can hospitality operators address them? Find out in this exclusive consumer research report in partnership with CGA by NIQ
Our previous GO Technology research revealed that hospitality still plays an important role in people’s social lives despite cost pressures, but with 49% of consumers saying they’d become less loyal to a brand after a few bad experiences, it’s incredibly important for hospitality businesses to deliver frictionless experiences that meet guests’ expectations, without any frustration during the journey.
This exclusive research of 5,000 hospitality consumers reveals the biggest frustrations guests encounter when engaging with venues, both in-venue and pre-visit, how these frustrations differ between demographics, and what actions they are likely to take following a frustrating experience.
What's in the report?
- Top 5 biggest bugbears
- Frustrations by stage in the customer journey
- How do these frustrations differ between demographics?
- Where and when consumers vent their frustrations about their hospitality experiences
Discover more useful content
blog
What makes people loyal to hospitality and how venues can maintain their loyalty
Discover the top reasons consumers choose to go out, the role hospitality plays in local communities, and what hospitality businesses can do to build and maintain customer loyalty in this blog – based on the findings from our recent ‘GO Technology: The value of hospitality’ research!
insight
Explore our virtual venues through the eyes of your customers
Visit our virtual pub, restaurant and hotel to discover how Zonal’s ecosystem of hospitality technology works behind the scenes to provide you with the intelligence and insights you need to improve customer experiences, boost loyalty, and drive revenue.
tools
Hospitality Tech Assessment: Improving the guest experience & driving loyalty
Answer a few short questions to identify how well your tech helps you to deliver incredible guest experiences that keep your customers coming back time and time again. At the end you’ll get personalised guidance which explains how you can leverage your customer data to offer personalised customer experiences.
Subscribe to get the latest news, product announcements and industry updates
Making the business case to Finance for hospitality technology
Learn more about how specialist hospitality technology can benefit wider stakeholders in your business, such as finance
As an operator working day-in, day-out with your front- and back-of-house teams, you may already be acutely aware of the tangible benefits your technology can offer to your business. However, it can be difficult to “sell” those benefits across for stakeholders within the business that may not be direct users of the technology on a daily basis.
In this guide, we explore how hospitality technology can also meet the needs of your finance team, how the operational improvements it brings can have a positive impact on the wider business, as well as how it can help to deliver more accurate, data-driven insights that facilitate better decision-making to drive the business forward.
Download this guide to discover:
- The benefits of hospitality technology to your wider business
- What key areas will your Finance team consider when implementing new hospitality tech?
- How specialist hospitality technology can meet your head of Finance’s priorities
- How to address any concerns they may have around integration and implementation
Discover more useful resources
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Guide: Transform your hotel's back-of-house operations with hospitality tech
Discover how a suite of connected hospitality technology can help build an efficient back-of-house operation in your hotel
With cutting costs and maximising margins front-of-mind for many hoteliers, ensuring you have the right technology in place to collect, capture and report on operational data from your bar & restaurant is integral to making better, more informed decisions.
Discover how specialist hospitality technology can transform your hotel’s back-of-house F&B operations, from automated and streamlined processes that result in frictionless experiences for guests, to real-time, reliable data collected at every touchpoint within the restaurant that increases reporting accuracy for stock management and business performance to help you cut costs and boost profits.
Download this guide to discover:
- The benefits of specialist hospitality technology in hotels
- How centralised product management improves control
- How stock & ordering technology can help you manage costs and reduce waste
- The role of accurate data in improving back-of-house operations
Discover more resources for hoteliers
tools
Hospitality Tech Assessment: Improving the guest experience & driving loyalty
Answer a few short questions to identify how well your tech helps you to deliver incredible guest experiences that keep your customers coming back time and time again. At the end you’ll get personalised guidance which explains how you can leverage your customer data to offer personalised customer experiences.
Subscribe to get the latest news, product announcements and industry updates
The Hotelier's Guide to Increasing F&B Revenue
Discover how industry-specific technology can help hoteliers maximise their F&B offering and boost revenue
With 57% of consumers stating that an on-site restaurant or bar as a ‘must-have’ amenity when looking to book a stay in a hotel, F&B presents a significant opportunity for hoteliers to drive revenue and increase guest spend. But it’s not just about having F&B on-site, it’s also about delivering great experiences and high-quality food and drink.
In this guide, we explore how you can maximise the appeal of your hotel’s F&B offering and drive revenue, including making the most of the booking journey to increase upselling, catering to guests’ demands for speed and convenience, and leveraging social media as a method of driving footfall.
Download this guide to discover:
- Current hotel hotel consumer trends
- How hoteliers can put F&B on guests’ radar during the booking journey
- The importance of room service and accommodating digital-savvy guests
- How industry-specific hospitality technology can help hoteliers streamline operations and maximise F&B revenues
