Friday Wrap: A round-up of the week's hospitality news

It’s enough to make you sick. Well the legal bods in the long running case involving a Spanish hotel and UK tour operator certainly thought so, and have won a £2.5m payout for 1,000 affected holiday makers.

It was the prices and down-your-throat eco message at Tom’s Place that attracted Fay Maschler’s distaste this week, with the Evening Standard restaurant critic far from convinced about Tom Aikens’s latest venture.

It’s looking increasingly like the already struggling pub industry will be walloped with tax rises in the Budget under the guise of social responsibility.

Continuing its efforts to head this off, industry body the British Beer & Pub Association pointed out that with falling consumption and rising duty in recent years
The Treasury is already receiving diminishing returns and a further hike in tax will not bring in any more money.

Facing a predicament of a different sort, experts have warned that the UK’s curry houses now face a staffing crisis unless the Government relaxes immigration rules for Bangladeshi migrant workers.

Michelin starred chef Raymond Blanc is also looking to recruit, albeit for a second series of TV’s The Restaurant.

ISS was busy this week acquiring front-of-house services company Arena21 and singing up to caterer for mobile phone network operator O2 through its business and industry division ISS Eaton.

Rival Lexington Catering made an acquisition of its own, recruiting a new chef to its development team.

Slightly carelessly D&D’s Orrey misplaced its third head chef in two years while the five-star Westbury hotel in Mayfair appointed a former Roux Scholar to head up its kitchen.

The School Food Trust secured funding to keep working to sort out the mess of a school meals system we now have and Henry J Beans owner Food & Drink
continued to rebuild after a difficult few months with the appointment of a new financial director.

By Chris Druce