Is your tourism business Safe, Clean & LegalTM?
Background:
Quality in Tourism provides quality assessment, advice, help & support for tourism & hospitality businesses across the UK. With the rise in the sharing economy and short term rental, Quality in Tourism knew they needed to address the surge of properties , support Destination Management Organisations (DMO’S) and ultimately protect the consumer from amateur operators.
Objectives:
The rise in platforms such as Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia has led to many homeowners listing their property as a place to stay as a way to generate more income. With little guidelines and regulation around what to do in this scenario, it is a recipe for disaster. Many hosts do not understand the ramifications around the effects on their insurance, mortgage and their responsibilities to the consumer.
Results:
As a result, apt marketing & pr has worked with Quality in Tourism to:
- Develop their Safe, Clean & LegalTM Framework which acts as an entry level standard for properties, assuring guests of their safety
- Create and develop a Primary Authority partnership with Cornwall Council. This enables the team to deliver assured advice & guidance to members on issues such as health & safety, fire safety and food hygiene.
- Position Quality in Tourism as industry experts, highlighting the issues and how they can be solved through the use of the framework. We have written a number of articles for trade, business and consumer press on the subject.
- Promote the partnership with UK STAA as their official accreditation body and encouraging members to sign up to the scheme
- Meet with Scottish Government surrounding their plans to regulate the industry and forming a significant part of a robust solution which can be adopted
- Conduct consumer research on the awareness of the lack of regulation within the industry. apt marketing & pr was responsible for writing the questions, commissioning the survey, analysing the results and feeding back in an appropriate way
- The results formed a significant part of the White Paper that apt wrote on ‘Safety Standards in the Sharing Economy’. The piece was targeted at local councils and DMOs and has been downloaded over 100 times.
- Hold the first ever DMO Summit at The Short Stay Show in London (March 2020), with over 5CL0 DMO’S registered for the event – above industry average for events like this.
