QUALITY IN TOURISM | WHEN AN INSPECTOR CALLS
QUALITY IN TOURISM
WHEN AN INSPECTOR CALLS ...
Is it possible to be successful , ethical and responsible ? Deborah Heather , Director of Quality in Tourism considers how businesses can stand out and thrive in a complicated market
In the last year alone , our industry has been put under scrutiny for everything from # MeToo sexual assault cases , to fire , legionnaire ’ s disease , food poisoning and even the question of value when there ’ s so much sharing economy choice . It almost seems as though the industry is destined to fail , yet it has never been bigger or seen more rapid growth . So is it possible to be a responsible , ethical business , and one that succeeds too ?
At the beginning of my career , the industry was a very different place . Business-side , it was much more contained , news travelled much slower and everything was certainly less public ; while client-side it was almost exclusively customer-service focussed . Pretty much anything that happened in the hotel environment stayed in the hotel environment , and if clients complained about the noise or the choice of breakfast for example , it was handled by an internal complaints procedure and the client was invariably , immediately appeased . Now , with a few clicks of the button , it ’ s simple to see who ’ s doing well and who isn ’ t ; who offers a five-star experience and who doesn ’ t . The industry has shifted and is at the mercy of keyboard warriors , all the while stomaching rising costs and prices and increased competition . Front of house staff are expected to morph between customer service roles , social media experts and online marketing gurus in a bid to stay ahead of the competition .
So can you be ethical and still succeed ? At one point in my career , I ran Dartington Hall , which was a social enterprise hotel .
Being part of a charity , the time spent ensuring the business was ethical and sustainable was phenomenal and the creativity and enthusiasm around this topic was vast . At the time , it was an unusual approach ( and largely still is ), arising from the fact that the hotel was charity-first , commercial-second . There were so many initiatives , but perhaps my favourite was our laundry relationship with the local prison , who laundered everything for the hotel , an initiative that we won numerous awards for .
Increasingly , my assessors return from conducting an independent quality assessment , raving about businesses that ‘ go the extra mile ’ and make outstanding commitments to their staff , the environment , their suppliers ; basically any aspect of the business where they can be better . So often , these stories were low-key , led by passionate managers or owners who want to do better or be better , but don ’ t really promote their commitments or even do them for commercial gain ; yet , these are exactly the kind of aspirational , experiential differentiators that the modern guest is on the hunt for . I have been astounded many times by the lengths that a business will go to , to be carbon-neutral , or to be an outstanding employer for example , just because it is ethically right or more sustainable . I was inspired , and I started to see a side to hospitality that is futurefocussed and responsible in a way we have not seen before . I wanted to recognise this ; the businesses doing well financially , but also doing what they do , well , just because they should .
For the past nine months , my team has been working on defining and developing independent assessment criteria for our new scheme , REST , which stands for ‘ Responsible , Ethical , Sustainable Tourism ’. It is a quality marque that recognises a business ’ social , moral and ethical compass in everything that it does , providing a benchmarking tool against basic , appropriate and aspirational standards , at the same time providing expert support to businesses to build on what they are already doing . Importantly , it is financially sound , with best practice information being used to demonstrate for example how the up-front addition of a renewable energy source can support significant medium-term savings , making it a financial and ethical decision too .
Having newly launched in March , the rationale for this scheme was to recognise the businesses that are not only ‘ doing well ’, but are also ‘ doing business well ’. Highlighting the businesses where commerciality is a component of their business , but is not the only component of their business . Every business has the opportunity to be better , and we ’ re setting out to recognise that , but also to support businesses in improving and prioritising their long-term sustainability , and the long-term industry future . Existing schemes didn ’ t recognise the ‘ non-standard ’ features of a business ( they are designed to credibly benchmark of course ), but in doing so , lose much of the individuality of the businesses being assessed .
During the development of these criteria , we have engaged with more than 50 businesses that flourish financially , but
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