Quality standards in UK accommodation receive two boosts

TravelMole guest comment, Ken Male, destination management consultant:

For those not involved, the recent announcement that the national tourist boards of England, Scotland and Wales together with the AA and the RAC have agreed, in principle, common accommodation rating standards may not have registered the significance it deserves.

The customer was, of course, the last to be considered when the existing criteria for accommodation grading were established a few years ago.

A situation was allowed whereby you had to know which country of the UK you were in to know what to expect for however many ‘Stars’ were displayed.

Thankfully, commonsense has now prevailed, under the direction of Alan Britten, and agreement in principle has been reached.

It will mean that we can now help to educate the consumer of what they will get for their money. To be fair to England, they did agree at the previous discussions to share common standards with the motoring organisations, but then never received the funding promised to promote the scheme to the public.

The industry did not embrace it, as there was no marketing advantage in paying to be in a scheme that the public did not understand, and so we still only have less than 50% of accommodation stock graded! 

Let us hope all proceeds with haste and agreement to meet the 2006 target, but may I suggest that if there are any stumbles through national stubbornness, the government tells the national boards that all funding will be withheld until full agreement is reached. That may concentrate the minds.

Without it there is little chance of reaching the government’s target of 80% registered by the end of 2006 for England.

Added to this announcement is the report on the ‘Fitness for Purpose’ testing carried out by a number of local authorities.

This is really aimed at those smaller establishments who have traditionally not joined any of the grading schemes, some of which provided very poor quality accommodation, leading to distrust by the customer in all domestic accommodation standards.

This scheme uses joined up local government to bring together the existing inspections, fire, environmental health, planning etc. too provide support to small businesses in delivering better standards. 

Where that support is ignored or rejected and bad practice continues the ‘stick’ of enforcing the legislation can be wielded.

The combination of the two announcements is good for the consumer and good for our industry, which should benefit from increased business from a more reassured public.

In the days of increasing online bookings, the customer wants to be able to book with confidence of what will be delivered for their hard-earned money. It will be a further incentive to get businesses signed up to quality standards, especially as they will not be eligible to be included on the national websites unless they are so.

More information can be found at:http://www.lga.gov.uk/Briefing.asp?lSection=0&id=SXA734-A7824802.