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Economic outlook: UK shows no growth in January as hospitality takes a hit

For the less spiky three-month growth figures, overall growth was 0.2%, a marginal improvement on the 0.1% growth figures for the three months up to December 2025.

The wider hospitality sector or ‘accommodation and food service activities’ saw a 0.7% drop for the three months up to January 2026, with this driven by a 2.9% fall for accommodation specifically.

• Read more: Oxford Wine Company splits operations

The ONS’s Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) (taken from 2 February to 15 February 2026) showed that 52% of businesses in the accommodation and food services industry saw a decrease in turnover for January compared to the previous month. It is worth noting this figure is influenced by the post-festive fall in trading, however, it is up from the same figure (45% seeing a drop in turnover) reported in the same survey period for January trading 2025.

The reports of the muted economic performance for the start of the year come amid growing concerns that the US-Israeli war on Iran, and the Iranian response of seeking to block the Strait of Hormuz as well as attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure, will have an adverse impact on the UK and global economy by raising energy prices.

An additional knock-on price impact of the conflict for the wine world is the anticipated rises in both the cost of sulphur and fertiliser. In terms of the former, half of the world’s exported sulphur is produced in the Gulf, while roughly 20% of the latter originates in the region (rising to around 46% for high-nitrogen urea fertiliser).

For both wine and spirits production, energy input costs are likely to rise. In terms of the latter, energy intensive processes such as heating copper stills in scotch production could also see steep price increases.

• data
• hospitality
• ONS
• turnover
• energy
• on-trade costs