Top 50 UK Hospitality and Retail Employers Sponsoring Skilled Worker Visas in 2026

Hospitality and retail are the sectors where the gap between "holds a sponsor licence" and "will sponsor your role" is widest, so let's be honest before the list. A licence does not make a waiter, barista, or shop-floor role sponsorable; those jobs sit below the skill threshold and always have. And since 22 July 2025 the door has narrowed further: chefs, hotel managers, and restaurant managers were removed from new Skilled Worker sponsorship when the skill threshold rose to degree level. What these employers still sponsor, at real volume, is the head-office machinery behind the brands (buying, supply chain, finance, and some of the largest tech and data teams in the country) plus degree-level specialists, and they continue to sponsor the chefs and managers they signed before the rules changed. The list below is 50+ hospitality and retail employers verified against the live Home Office register at the time of writing.

Always verify a specific employer on the gov.uk Register of Licensed Sponsors before applying. Sponsor status changes, and a licence can be suspended or revoked at any time. Lumina's "Visa sponsors only" filter runs this check automatically for every job in your search.

How this list was curated

The same three filters as our tech, healthcare, engineering, and finance sponsor lists:

Currently on the register, cross-checked against the live Home Office data (the same source behind Lumina's sponsor badge), on the Skilled Worker route, with an A rating. No B ratings, no expired entries.
Hospitality- or retail-led. Hotel groups, restaurant groups, pubs, contract caterers, supermarkets, and high street and online retail.
Large enough to hire internationally at a meaningful rate. Independent restaurants hold licences too (often for a single head chef), but the names below recruit at scale.

A note on names: the register lists legal entities, not brands, and this sector is full of traps. Premier Inn is "Whitbread Group Plc". The Ivy restaurants sit under "Troia (UK) Restaurants". Four Seasons' Park Lane hotel is "Inn on the Park (London) Limited". Claridge's, The Connaught, and The Berkeley are under "Maybourne Hotels Limited". And a search for McDonald's or Domino's returns dozens of franchisee companies, each holding its own licence, alongside the corporate entity. If a brand search comes up empty, try a fragment; our step-by-step register guide covers the quirks.

Hotel groups

Hilton (Watford; Hilton UK Hotels Limited)
Marriott (London; Marriott Hotels Ltd)
IHG (Windsor; InterContinental Hotels Group PLC, the group behind Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza)
Accor (London; Accor UK Limited, the group behind Novotel, ibis, and Sofitel)
Radisson (Manchester; Radisson Hotels UK Ltd)
Hyatt (London; Hyatt Holdings (UK) Ltd)
Whitbread / Premier Inn (Dunstable; Whitbread Group Plc)
Travelodge (Thame; Travelodge Hotels)
Leonardo Hotels (London; Leonardo Hotel Management (UK) Limited, formerly Jurys Inn)
Dalata (Cardiff; Dalata UK Limited, the group behind Clayton and Maldron hotels)

Luxury hotels

Four Seasons London (London; Inn on the Park (London) Limited, plus separate entities for Tower Bridge and Hampshire)
Maybourne (London; Maybourne Hotels Limited: Claridge's, The Connaught, The Berkeley)
The Ritz (London; Ritz Hotel (London) Limited)
Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park (London)
Shangri-La (London; Shangri-La Hotels Pte Limited, The Shard)
Corinthia (London; Corinthia Global Management Limited)
Rocco Forte Hotels (London; Rocco Forte & Family (Hotel Management) Limited)
Gleneagles (Perthshire; The Gleneagles Hotel Limited)
Firmdale Hotels (London; Firmdale Hotels PLC, the Kit Kemp townhouse group)
Soho House (London; Soho House Limited)
The Pig Hotels (Lyndhurst; Home Grown Hotels Ltd, plus sister hotel Lime Wood)

Restaurant groups

Chef roles were the sector's sponsorship workhorse until 22 July 2025, and these groups still carry sponsored chefs under the transitional rules (more on that below), alongside their head-office hiring:

Dishoom (London; Dishoom Limited)
JKS Restaurants (London; JKS Restaurants Holdings Ltd: Gymkhana, Trishna, Hoppers, Brigadiers)
Hakkasan (London; Hakkasan Limited)
Gordon Ramsay Restaurants (London; Gordon Ramsay Restaurants Ltd)
The Ivy Collection (London; Troia (UK) Restaurants)
Ottolenghi (London; Ottolenghi Limited)
Wagamama (London; Wagamama Limited)
PizzaExpress (Uxbridge; PizzaExpress Group Limited)
Nando's (London; Nando's Ltd)
Pret a Manger (London; Pret a Manger (Europe) Limited)
McDonald's (London; McDonald's Restaurants Limited, the corporate entity; many franchisees hold separate licences)
KFC (Woking; Kentucky Fried Chicken (Great Britain) Limited)

Pubs and contract catering

Greene King (Bury St Edmunds; Greene King Limited)
Mitchells & Butlers (Birmingham; Mitchells & Butlers PLC: Toby Carvery, All Bar One, Miller & Carter)
Fuller's (Chiswick; Fuller Smith & Turner PLC)
Compass Group (Chertsey; Compass Group Plc, the world's largest contract caterer)
Sodexo (Salford; Sodexo UK Limited)

Supermarkets and grocery

Sponsorship here is overwhelmingly head office: software engineering, data science, supply chain, and specialist roles like pharmacists. The store-floor roles are not sponsorable, and no list changes that.

Tesco (Welwyn Garden City; Tesco Stores Limited)
Sainsbury's (London; J Sainsbury Plc)
Asda (Leeds; Asda Stores Ltd)
Morrisons (Bradford; WM Morrison Supermarkets Limited)
Aldi (Atherstone; Aldi Stores Limited)
Lidl (London; Lidl Great Britain Limited)
Co-op (Manchester; Co-operative Group Limited)
Ocado (Hatfield; Ocado Retail Limited, with Ocado Central Services Limited also licensed for group roles)
Marks & Spencer (London; Marks and Spencer Group Plc)

High street and online retail

Next (Leicester; Next Retail Ltd)
Frasers Group (Shirebrook; Sports Direct, House of Fraser, Flannels)
Kingfisher (London; Kingfisher PLC, the group behind B&Q and Screwfix)
Currys (London; Currys Group Limited)
Boots (Nottingham; Boots Management Services)
Pets at Home (Handforth; Pets at Home Ltd)
IKEA (London; IKEA Ltd.)
H&M (London; H & M Hennes & Mauritz UK Ltd)
ASOS (London; ASOS.com)
Burberry (London; Burberry Limited)
Amazon (London; Amazon UK Services Ltd)

Luxury and department stores

Harrods (London; Harrods Ltd)
Selfridges (London; Selfridges Retail Limited)
Harvey Nichols (London; Harvey Nichols and Company Limited)
Fortnum & Mason (London; Fortnum & Mason Plc)
Liberty (London; Liberty Retail Limited)

Which roles actually get sponsored here

The pattern across every employer above, under the rules in force since 22 July 2025:

Head office professionals. This is now the main story. The supermarkets and big retailers run some of the largest tech teams in the country. Tesco, Sainsbury's, Ocado, and M&S hire software engineers, data scientists, and analysts on exactly the same visa terms as any tech company, and those roles clear £41,700 comfortably. The hotel and restaurant groups hire degree-level finance, marketing, revenue, and development roles the same way.
Degree-level specialists. Pharmacists at Boots and the supermarkets, and vets in the Pets at Home group.
Existing sponsored chefs and managers, under transitional arrangements. Chefs (occupation code 5434), hotel managers, and restaurant managers came off the eligible list on 22 July 2025 when the skill threshold rose to degree level. Anyone already sponsored in those roles before that date can extend and even change employer, which is why the restaurant groups above still hold and use their licences for kitchen staff. What no employer can do any more is issue a first Certificate of Sponsorship for a new chef or site-manager hire.
Watch this space. The interim Temporary Shortage List runs to the end of 2026 and currently includes no food and beverage roles, but the Migration Advisory Committee reviewed a further set of occupations in July 2026 with changes proposed from January 2027. If chef roles return, expect conditions attached (Temporary Shortage List roles currently cannot bring dependants).

For everything still eligible, the general threshold of £41,700 (with lower floors for new entrants and some occupations) is the number to beat. Our salary thresholds breakdown has the details.

How to use this list

Verify the employer on gov.uk first. The register changes daily and this post carries a publication date.
Be realistic about the role, not the brand. The question is never "does Hilton sponsor?" but "does this specific role, at this salary, on this occupation code, qualify?" Ask the recruiter the right questions early.
Check the legal employer on the job ad. In franchised brands, the sponsor may be a franchisee company, not the name above.
For everything not on this list, use Lumina's "Visa sponsors only" filter. It checks every job in your search against the same register, including the thousands of independent hotels and restaurant companies we did not name.

One honest caveat on absences: a name missing from this list means nothing on its own. Several household names, including John Lewis and Waitrose, Primark, JD Sports, JD Wetherspoon, Young's, The Savoy, and the Dorchester Collection, did not appear on the Skilled Worker register under their obvious entity names when we checked. Some genuinely do not sponsor; for others the licence may sit with a differently-named entity. That is exactly why the per-employer, per-role check matters more than any list. When in doubt, search the register, or let Lumina do it for every job automatically.

Mohammad Etminan is the founder of Lumina. He writes about the practical mechanics of the UK Skilled Worker visa job search and the data underneath it. This post is a starting point, not legal advice. For an application that depends on a specific outcome, talk to a regulated immigration adviser.