As a UK SME, AGO is continuing to be affected by soaring energy costs at its hotels and has experienced a significant rise in its gas bills in recent weeks. With the Energy Bill Relief Scheme also coming to an end in March, cofounders Viv Watts and Lionel Benjamin are expecting the impact of these growing costs to be huge, on property and hospitality businesses such as AGO Hotels.

Viv Watts, cofounder of AGO Hotels said: “Rising energy bills continue to affect businesses and consumers across the UK and with the Energy Bill Relief Scheme coming to an end in March things are only going to get more challenging.

“At AGO Hotels, we have experienced first-hand the impact of rising energy prices. This has been made worse by some providers switching businesses onto variable deals when contracts come to an end, rather than agreeing a new fixed deal. Across some of our hotels, when gas contracts have been up for renewal, we have been placed onto variable deals which have been as much as 800% more than the previous costs. In one of our hotels when the electricity bill went out of contract, our monthly cost increased from £6,600 to £26,300. Energy bills are now over 30% of our operating costs, when they had been between 8-12%. Although this might be down from the highs of 2022, we hope to see energy unit costs decreasing steadily over the coming months.”