Innkeeper Magazine December 2017

ISSUE 10 • DECEMBER 2017

0(® É Ë maga zine Ë Ë &

OTAS ON THE RUN A solid marketing strategy will help you beat the online threat

VODKA RENAISSANCE? Appeal is broadening for the UK’s favourite spirit

P lus : WINTER WARMERS

An array of winter cocktails to suit all tastes

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contents

welcome... this month...

Last month innkeepers across the UK raised a glass to the Chancellor for heeding the arguments put to him not to raise duty on beer, wine and spirits in his Autumn Budget. These pleas were conveyed on your behalf with great efficiency by various lobby groups, among them the British Institute of Innkeeping, the British Beer & Pub Association and the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers.

By leaving duty levels unchanged he has saved the sector an estimated £116m and at the same time boosted consumer confidence.

The other chief concern the Chancellor listened to ahead of the Budget concerns the VAT threshold, widely rumoured to be set to be lowered and thus bring into VAT liability thousands of small businesses across the country. The threshold remains unchanged at £85,000.

While these decisions are to be welcomed, however, it is still inequitable that tourism VAT has not been reduced. At 20% the tax is more than double the average across the rest of Europe. Calls for a reduction in tourism VAT were widespread but unheeded by the Chancellor.

In the Republic of Ireland tourism VAT was reduced on a pilot basis some years ago before being fully implemented. If the same changes were made in the UK it could have a positive impact on the health and finances of inns across the country.

Lobby group Cut Tourism VAT is campaigning for the level to be brought in line with competitor destinations within the EU. The main contention of the campaign is that the UK is one of only three countries not to take advantage of a reduced rate, meaning British families staying in inns in the UK are paying three times the level of VAT they would pay for an equivalent break in Germany or France.

Something to think about ahead of the next Budget.

4 NEWS Recent news within your industry & beyond

28

12 CORE ISSUES Industry news analysis

16 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Calum McIndoe explains the role of AI is set to grow in the hospitality sector

18 TRAINING Two industry figures give their views on the importance of training in hospitality businesses large and small

20 VODKA RENAISSANCE Matthew Attwood asks if the UK's favourite spirit could be next in line for a renaissance

24 WINTER WARMERS A spread of winter cocktails from spicy chilled mulled wine to whisky and tequila recipes

28 COGNAC’S STAR RISES The UK is the fourth largest market for the sophisticated French spirit

32 OUTDOOR HEAT AND LIGHT Bill Lumley EDITOR

www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

18

The choice of style and quality of outdoor heating and lighting is rising all the time DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 3

news

INNKEEPERS WELCOME DUTY FREEZE Innkeepers across the UK have reacted with relief to the Chancellor’s announcement of a freeze on duty imposed on wine, spirits, beer and cider in his Autumn Budget.

British Institute of Innkeeping chief executive Mike Clist said: “We welcome the fact that Government has listened to the call to help pubs in what is a very competitive marketplace.

“No increases in drinks duty will hopefully encourage customers to continue to use our great British pubs.”

Chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association Miles Beale said: “We are pleased that the Chancellor has found his festive spirit and listened to the call from the WSTA and its members and has frozen wine and spirit duty. He has shown the Government is in touch with what consumers want and is supporting an industry which is proving to be a real asset to British business. He has recognised that rebalancing the UK’s excessive

duty rates is a win-win for both the Treasury, the wine and spirit trade – not to mention consumers.

This decision will be celebrated by millions who will raise a glass this festive season.”

British Beer & Pub Association chief executive Brigid Simmonds said: “The Chancellor’s decision to freeze beer duty and cancel his planned rise is an early Christmas present for beer drinkers and pub-goers worth £117m this year and in subsequent years. It will secure over 3,000 jobs in pubs and the wider beer supply chain that would otherwise have been lost. This real-terms duty cut shows he has listened to our campaign and the concerns of pubs and pub-goers, and acknowledged the special role that beer and pubs play in the nation’s social life.

“With over 80% of the beer drunk in the UK brewed in the UK, he has understood the important capital investment made in the UK by our members. This is absolutely the right step

towards a fairer deal for Britain’s beer drinkers and pub-goers and a vote of confidence in a very British manufacturing industry worth £23bn to the UK economy. Beer drinkers will raise a glass to the Chancellor tonight.

“This extension of the pub-specific rate relief is also very welcome and continues to recognise the disproportionate rates burden faced by pubs.

Moving from RPI increases to CPI two years earlier than planned from April 2018 is really welcome as is in the announcement on three yearly revaluations. It shows the Government is listening to our concerns and this will save pubs £37m this year alone.

“The announcement that revaluations will happen more frequently is good news too, as high rates bills for pubs often lag behind the trading realities.”

Continued on page 6

PREMIUM PUB AND INN OWNER LISTS TO FUND GROWTH City Pub Group, owner of the eight-guestroom Waterman Inn in Cambridge, was in the process of listing on AIM and had received a strong response by the end of November as Innkeeper magazine went to press.

Founded by Firkin pub co-founder David Bruce, former owner of the Capital Pub Company in London Clive Watson and former Fuller Smith &Turner managing director John Roberts, City Pub Group currently owns 34 premium inns and pubs across Southern England. Further acquisitions will be announced in the near future, helped by the floatation, according to chairman and co-founder Clive Watson. The funds raised by the IPO will support the group's expansion plans, with the target of doubling the size of its current portfolio over the next three to four years he said.

He said: “A successful AIM listing will assist, fund and complement the group's proven growth strategy, enabling it to achieve its target to double the size of its estate over the next three to four years and deliver significant shareholder value,” said Watson.

“The City Pub Group is a vibrant, growing business with a clear strategy, strong and experienced management team and a well-developed pipeline of sites with an exciting market opportunity ahead.

4 | INN KEEPER DECEMBER 2017

“We have built the group's largely freehold portfolio in key towns and cities in Southern England. The pubs are unbranded and focus on their local market. The strong response to our IPO proposal, with the placing being significant-

ly oversubscribed, supports our strategy and will enable the group to capitalise on the significant opportunities to expand the pub portfolio, including into new locations, and to build long term value for shareholders."

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news EDITOR Bill Lumley bill.lumley@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852 345 NORTHERN IRELAND EDITOR Francis Higney 01737 852 345 CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Caroline Sargent stuart.west@jld-media.co.uk 07076 362082 CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Matthew Attwood stuart.west@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852345 SALES MANAGER Dywayne Ramsundar dywayne.ramsundar@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852 342 DESIGN & PRODUCTION Stuart West stuart.west@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852 343 PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Helen Richmond helen.richmond@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852 344 No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system without the express prior written consent of the publisher.

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6 | INN KEEPER DECEMBER 2017

Continues from page 4 The Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers has welcomed support outlined in last month’s Budget statement on alcohol duty and business rates, but also urged the government to follow this good work with continued reform of business rates to help support the UK’s valuable eating and drinking out sector.

ALMR chief executive Kate Nicholls said: “At a time of rising costs, a freeze in the beer duty and a continuation of support for pubs on business rates is very welcome.

“The ALMR has been pushing for a duty freeze across all alcohol types, and this positive action will help tackle rising costs, saving the sector around £116m, as well as underpinning consumer confidence.

“An extension of the pub-specific rates relief will save the sector almost £20m, and bringing forward the move from RPI to CPI to calculate bills, something the ALMR has pushed for, will save close to £100m over four years.

“The promise of more frequent revaluations is also welcome and something the ALMR has lobbied for, although we are concerned that, in practice, there may be some administrative burdens which will need to be addressed.

“It is also good to see the Government accepting the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission on the rate of the National Living Wage, de-politicising the decision. Although this may present a modest financial burden for employers it will also put money in the

pockets of our customers.

“This shows that the Government has listened to the concerns of the sector, the concerns of ALMR members, and acted to support vital hospitality businesses at a time of economic and political instability. The ALMR has worked hard to communicate the pressures being faced by eating and drinking out businesses and it is good to see the Chancellor acknowledging these challenges and listening to what businesses have to say.

“The next step is for the Government to push ahead with its promised package of root and branch reform for business rates, and the ALMR is looking forward to working closely with the Government to deliver change,” Nicholls said.

The British Institute of Innkeeping has jointly welcomed further support for pubs on business rates.

Mike Clist said: “Moving the annual inflation of rateable values from RPI to CPI, continuing the £1,000 rate relief policy for a further year and moving the revaluation of properties to 3 yearly will all help. We do however still believe the rating system needs a complete overhaul and we will continue to lobby for this.”

In the weeks running up to the Budget statement concern had grown among the hospitality sector that the Chancellor would raise wine, beer and spirits duty for the second time this year. In his Budget in March he raised duty by 3.9%, costing inns and pubs an estimated £125m, according to the BBPA. www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

news BUTCOMBE BUYS MOST OF SA BRAIN’S ENGLISH INN AND PUB PORTFOLIO Eight English pubs including an inn owned and operated by SA Brain are being sold to Butcombe for an undisclosed sum. These pubs make up most of SA Brain’s portfolio of pubs in England.

The eight operations include six managed sites, comprising the 11-bedroom Bowl in Almondsbury, the Smoking Dog in Malmesbury, the Bear in Cirencester, the Ostrich in Bristol, Jubilee in Flax Bourton and White Horse in Buckover, as well as two tenanted pubs, the Langford in Lower Langford and Old Station in Hallatrow. Seven of these pubs are freehold and one leasehold.

Butcombe has more than doubled its pub estate business in the West Country over the last year. In addition to purchasing high quality pubs, Butcombe is also investing in the Butcombe Brewery, expanding its range of beers to include new beers such as blonde ale Pioneer, and upgrading its infrastructure with a new distribution depot and kegging and bottling line. This latest acquisition brings the Butcombe pub estate to 43 and, according to a statement from the brewery, further advances Butcombe’s strategy of becoming the leading West Country regional brewer and pub owner.

SA Brain said it plans to focus its future licensed retail operations within

Wales, where it will continue to operate around 100 managed houses and a leased and tenanted estate totalling more than 70 pubs.

Liberation Group CEO Mark Crowther said: “The addition of these eight high quality pubs to our portfolio further accelerates the growth of our rapidly expanding pub estate, strengthening our presence in our heartland around Bath and Bristol. These pubs are a perfect fit with our existing portfolio and will benefit from ownership by our fast growing, market leading regional brewery with its well-known brands. We welcome all those who work in those pubs and look forward to building a successful future together.”

SA Brain CEO Scott Waddington added: “The sale of our English pubs is well timed given the outstanding prospects we have to further grow our brand and pubs business in Wales. The rich affection with which our brand is held has further solidified our conviction to pursue our pub agenda inside Wales.

We will remain very proud of the period of ownership we have enjoyed with the pubs that are being acquired by Butcombe and believe the team, with their West Country heartland, are well placed to take these businesses forward.”

EU WORKERS CONTINUE TO GROW IN NUMBER The number of EU citizens employed in the UK rose in the quarter July to September according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The figures show the impact of Brexit has not yet had a noticeable effect on staff availability for the hospitality sector.

Defying concerns that high levels of EU nationals would leave the UK following the referendum in June 2016, the number of EU nationals employed in the UK rose for each of the four quarters to the end of September 2016 by almost 100,000 from 2.309m to 2.403m.

During the same period the number of non-EU nationals also rose quarter on quarter by just over 400,000 to the end of September 2017.

Meanwhile the number of non-EU nationals employed in the UK fell during the third quarter of 2017 for the first time in more than three years. There were 27,000 fewer South Africans employed in the UK but the number from Australia and New Zealand rose by 13,000 in the three months to the end of September this year.

UK employment levels by country of birth (‘000) Period

Total non-UK EU

Total non-EU

Apr-Jun 2014

1,849

2,951

Jul-Sep 2014

1,822

2,945

Oct-Dec 2014

1,905

2,900

Jan-Mar 2015

1,958

2,954

Apr-Jun 2015

2,047

2,992

Jul-Sep 2015

2,122

3,005

Oct-Dec 2015

2,115

3,006

Jan-Mar 2016

2,211

3,041

Apr-Jun 2016

2,335

3,083

Jul-Sep 2016

2,359

3,214

Oct-Dec 2016

2,309

3,261

Jan-Mar 2017

2,359

3,280

Apr-Jun 2017

2,373

3,308

Jul-Sep 2017

2,403

3,302

Source: ONS

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DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 7

news DROP IN EMPLOYMENT UNDERLINES NEED FOR SECTOR SUPPORT The ALMR has reacted to shock news that job creation in the sector has fallen, by calling on the Government to take action to support eating and drinking out businesses.

Figures released in November show employment in the sector dropped by almost 25,000, or 1.4%, in the latest quarter.

ALMR Chief Executive Kate Nicholls said: “The eating and drinking out sector has been a fantastic generator of jobs in recent years, employing 1.8m people, one in every six created, since 2009.

“This shock drop in the number of jobs created in the last quarter shows that eating and drinking out businesses are approaching a crucial tipping point and proactive support from the Government is needed without delay.

“The figures show the strength and impor-

tance of the sector, employing nearly 1.8 million people – 7% of the private sector workforce – but this drop in employment shows that even a very robust sector is not immune to huge financial pressures.

“The Chancellor must take decisive action on business rates and alcohol duties at the Budget next week, or more businesses are going to struggle to continue investing in their venues and job creation will stall.”

Eating and drinking out businesses generate £63bn in turnover (+37% since 2010) and contribute £32bn GVA (+63% since 2010), pay a third of turnover in taxes and invest £4.4bn pa in our high streets and local communities.

The sector supports 1.8m jobs, up by 18% since 2010. It creates one in six of all new UK jobs and has grown at 6.5% pa since 2010.

INNS TO BENEFIT FROM NEW INTERNATIONAL TOURISM CAMPAIGN PROMOTING GREAT WALKING TRAILS Hundreds of pubs and inns on and near Britain’s great national trails stand to benefit from a new tourism promotion. Seven ‘Great Walks of England’ will be showcased in a new campaign worth more than £1.2m targeting key overseas markets.

The campaign is being funded thanks to a successful bid for £1 million from Visit England’s £40 million Discover England Fund – matched by £200,000 from the private sector - by tourist board Marketing Peak District & Derbyshire.

The British Beer & Pub Association and Stay in a Pub/Cask Marque are working in partnership with Marketing Peak District and Derbyshire to help support the scheme.

Challenging, yet comfortable experiences combining the best of the country’s coastal and rural landscapes with cosy pubs, locally-brewed beers, fine local food and quality accommodation are to be developed for walkers in Germany, The Netherlands, France and the USA. BBPA Chief Executive Brigid Simmonds said: “We are delighted to be working with this initiative, and it is great to see it recognising the vital role pubs play in rural tourism in Britain. There are hundreds of great pubs on Britain’s walking 8 | INN KEEPER DECEMBER 2017

MIXED FEELING GREET MINIMUM UNIT PRICE DECISION trails with many now also offering fantastic accommodation. This campaign will really bring this to the attention of overseas tourist markets.

Paul Nunny, Stay in a Pub, added: “According to Visit England one of the top three ‘must dos’ listed by inbound tourists is to visit an English Pub. Using this funding from Visit England to promote pubs and pub accommodation is an open invitation they are likely to accept.

“On the new website promoting the Great National Walks we will link to the Stay In A Pub website so tourists can book accommodation online. Already 15 per cent of enquiries on the website are from abroad. Cask Marque will also create ale trails on each walk, building on the success of the World’s Biggest Ale Trail which now has 30,000 followers. This campaign will be a big win for the industry.”

The ALMR has reacted to the confirmation that a minimum unit price for alcohol will be introduced in Scotland.

ALMR Chief Executive Kate Nicholls said: “Any measures that seek to promote healthier attitudes towards alcohol are to be welcomed, although we remain unconvinced that a minimum unit price will have the effect on problematic consumption the Scottish Government is seeking.

“The priority now is for the sector to work with the Scottish Government to implement the measure in a way that does not have a detrimental effect on eating and drinking out venues that are vital to Scotland’s economy.”

www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

news WELL-RUN INNS TO REMAIN “VERY PROFITABLE” A report produced by HVS says RevPAR (rooms revenue per available room) may have peaked but five-year trend suggests continued growth and profitability.

Widespread predictions of UK labour shortages and increasing costs mean investors become wary of hotel assets due to RevPAR levelling off, according to the latest Hotel Bulletin published

by HVS, AlixPartners, STR and AM:PM. The bulletin reports that in the third quarter this year, average growth in RevPAR - at 5% was the lowest since the first quarter of 2016.

But the report also suggests the overall long-term outlook for UK hotels remains positive.

The results outpace UK GDP growth, which

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has averaged below 1% in the same period, but the impact of a lower-growth environment amid global political uncertainty and an increasing threat of terror is taking its toll on performance across hotels in the 12 UK cities polled.

Russell Kett, HVS chairman, said: “The UK hotel industry has faced a stream of headwinds in recent years, including rising costs, supply growth, terrorist attacks, and the evolution of third-party distribution and sharing economies.

“However, the five-year trend suggests that hotel operators will continue to adapt and innovate to drive continued growth and profitability, and thereby value. It is unlikely that investor interest will ever wane substantially for hotels in London, although it might start to taper off in the provinces.”

He added: “Performance continues to grow, albeit at a slower rate, and even though profitability may be adversely affected through rising operating costs, hotels still remain very profitable, particularly when operators are talented, diligent and nimble.”

Belfast and Edinburgh saw an 11% RevPAR growth, owing largely to tourists taking advantage of the weaker pound.”

He told Innkeeper magazine the growth and profitability trends could apply even more strongly to well-managed inns: “Sometimes smaller establishments can perform quite differently from ‘industry averages’ especially when they are well run and focused on delivering outstanding guest experiences.”

London recorded a 2% increase in RevPAR, despite a drop in occupancy, while Aberdeen recorded its eleventh consecutive quarter fall at the lower rate of 1%.

While forecasts expect year-end RevPAR to show an overall increase

of 4.5%, key issues for the sector are controlling costs, most notably that of labour, and the sourcing of staff due to the declining net migration and the UK’s expanding hotel supply.

However, the Bulletin points out that UK hotels rank in the top three for gross operating profit per available room (GOPPAR), reflecting a GOP margin percentage of 43.9% ahead of those in the US, China, France, Spain, and Germany, and behind only Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.

SCIENTISTS CREATE VIRTUAL COCKTAIL Scientists at the National University of Singapore have developed a virtual cocktail, or ‘vocktail’, that digitally stimulates multi-sensory flavour experiences.

According to a report in Forbes, the interactive cocktail glass allows the guest to create his or her own cocktail flavours, smells and colours to enhance those already in the drink.

The inside of the base of the glass contains the electronics needed for multisensory stimulation, including scent cartridges and three micro air pumps.

According to its creators, the scents are housed in ‘smell chambers’ in the base of the glass, and take just one second to rise up through the glass and reach the drinker.

LED lights chance the colour of the cocktail, and two silver electrodes on the rim of the glass give off salty, bitter and sweet tastes when the drinker makes contact with the glass with their tongue.

According to Forbes, the tastes can be achieved through different magnitudes – 180 microamps for a sour, 40 microamps for salty and 80 microamps for bitter.

The study found that the combined stimulation of sight, smell and taste from the glass changed the perceived taste of the drink, enhancing its flavour and creating a richer drinking experience for the user.

The ‘vocktail’ comes with an app that allows users to customise their drinking experience by choosing the colour of their cocktail and its virtual aromas and flavours via Bluetooth technology.

If a specific combination works really well, users can save the information of their virtual cocktail and share it with their friends via the app.

Cocktail feature, page 24 DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 9

news

VISITBRITAIN ANNOUNCES REGIONS PARTNERSHIP TO ATTRACT OVERSEAS VISITORS VisitBritain has announced a partnership with Birmingham and the surrounding areas to promote more of England’s regions to overseas visitors.

The three-year partnership is a joint initiative with Birmingham Airport, the West Midlands Growth Company, Shakespeare’s England and Marketing Peak District & Derbyshire.

Under the new partnership the organisations will collectively market Birmingham and the surrounding areas to a global audience, convert inspiration to visit into bookings, and promote direct flights to the area. In the first year, the partnership will focus on the US market.

According to a spokesman, the partner destinations offer a wide range of experiences to overseas visitors, “from stunning rural landscapes to cosmopolitan retail and world-class cultural gems, Birmingham”.

VisitBritain commercial director Carol Dray said: “Tourism is one of the UK’s most valuable export industries, worth £127 billion annually to the economy.

“Increasing regional connectivity not only makes it easier for visitors to see more of Britain, the West Midlands and the Peak District, it

boosts economic growth, and helps keep us an attractive destination in this fiercely competitive global market.”

West Midlands Growth Company director of marketing and communications Emma Gray said: “Birmingham and its surrounding areas have become increasingly popular tourist destinations, attracting some 1.5 million international visitors in 2015.

“By working in partnership with our destination partners we will be in an even stronger position to attract more visitors to the region, increasing economic development and growth.

We look forward to capitalising on the opportunities and benefits that this initiative will bring to the tourism industry in the future.”

Birmingham Airport’s commercial director Jo Lloyd added: “We’re proud and excited to be working with partners on this gateway campaign to drive more visitors to the region over the next three years. England’s Heartland offers visitors everything they could possibly imagine - from adventure and history to culture and arts – and with new long haul low cost direct services commencing next summer, Birmingham Airport offers the perfect gateway for visitors ready to

FRONT (LEFT TO RIGHT) JUSTINE HOWL – BIRMINGHAM AIRPORT, HEAD OF COMMUNICATIONS HELEN PETERS - SHAKESPEARE’S ENGLAND, CHIEF EXECUTIVE CAROL DRAY – VISITBRITAIN, COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR GAVIN LANDRY – VISITBRITAIN, REGIONAL DIRECTOR, THE AMERICAS BACK (LEFT TO RIGHT) LINDSAY RAE – MARKETING PEAK DISTRICT & DERBYSHIRE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND HEAD OF INDUSTRY ENGAGEMENT EMMA GRAY – WEST MIDLANDS GROWTH COMPANY, DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND COMMUNICATION

10 | INN KEEPER DECEMBER 2017

discover our vibrant cities, beautiful villages and rolling countryside.”

Birmingham Airport is the UK’s third largest airport outside London and is described as “the gateway to England’s Heartland”. Next year, Primera Air will launch low fare direct flights into Birmingham from New York, Boston and Toronto in the US and Canada.

The US is Britain’s most valuable inbound visitor market and also one of its largest. Latest figures from VisitBritain show that there were 1.9 million visits from the US to the UK in the first six months of this year, a 31% increase on the same period last year. Visitors from the US spent £1.8 billion between January and June this year, a 28% increase on the same period last year.

VisitBritain’s forecast shows that overseas visits are expected to reach 39.7 million in 2017, up 6% on 2016 figures. Spending by overseas visitors is forecast to reach £25.7 billion, up 14% on 2016.

Tourism is worth £127 billion to the UK economy, creating jobs and boosting economic growth across its nations and regions.

The West Midlands Growth Company (WMGC) will help to create new jobs, expand existing businesses and attract new businesses and investment to the region, aligned to the ambitions set out in the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Strategic Economic Plan.

Formerly Marketing Birmingham, the company was established in April 2017.

Marketing Peak District & Derbyshire’s purpose is “to develop and grow a successful and sustainable tourism economy, working closely with a wide range of partners to make the Peak District and Derbyshire the destination of choice – regionally, nationally and globally”.

Birmingham Airport is the UK’s third largest airport outside London, and the UK’s seventh largest overall, handling 13m passengers a year.

It serves more than 140 direct routes and offers a further 340 possible connections worldwide. www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

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core issues

INNKEEPERS CONFRONT STAFFING CRISIS POSTBREXIT

Owners and managers at inns across the UK must focus as never before upon employee retention, HOSPA conference and exhibition (HOSPACE) delegates were warned last month.

12 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

B

ritish Hospitality Association policy adviser John Guthrie presented his overview of the situation regarding the UK’s probable departure from the EU, and suggested the consequences arising from the end of free movement could be dramatic for the industry.

“At the time of the build-up to the Maastricht Treaty the idea that Britain was going to get a deal, or secure its opt-outs from the single currency or social chapter, was viewed as deeply improbable,” he told delegates.

“Although the economic and political canvas today is much more difficult and Conservative party policy more complex, there are 27 member states to negotiate with, not 11, it has to be the case that Brexit must be viewed by businesses if not as a certainty then a probability. Efforts by the likes of Nick Clegg, Andrew Adonis and Ken Clarke going to Brussels and so forth are all very interesting but while I think businesses should regard Brexit as overwhelmingly probable, they should only regard a transitional deal as probable.”

Illustrating that an exit from the European Union is not a certainty, he said: “Probabilities today are all well and good, but it was probably the case that the UK was going to vote to stay in the EU, it was probably the case that Hilary Clinton was going to win the US presidential election, and it was also probably the case www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

core issues that Jeremy Corbyn was going to get annihilated. So probabilities are much more difficult today than they were 25 years ago."

When the referendum result came through last year, many of us in the industry came to realise very quickly that the consequences were potentially very serious for our industry because of the end of free movement,” he said.

From an employment perspective, the end of free movement will have potentially very serious consequence, he warned an audience of around 500 delegates.

“If we just take a few simple numbers, we estimate there are 3.2m direct employment jobs in hospitality. One of the features of hospitality as we all know is that labour turnover is quite high. If you take 30% as the gross turnover figure, that means the number of people who are leaving their job in the hospitality industry each year is 916,000. But what we do not know absolutely is net turnover - the number of people who leave their job in hospitality and leave the sector entirely. But if you were to take it as 20% you are at a resourcing requirement of 192,000. If you just add 1.5% organic employment growth – the average of the last five years – then that is another 48,000.”

That means there are 24,000 new people that need to be recruited each year just to maintain current operations and grow, he said.

“If you end free movement on a Friday and there is no replacement immigration machine the following Monday - the so-called cliff edge - then the KPMG team we commissioned to look at it would estimate that in those circumstances the hospitality sector would need to recruit an additional 62,000 UK workers each year.”

At a time of very low level of UK unemployment – currently at 4.4% - and at the same time the highest employment rate in the OECD, such a resourcing requirement all other things being equal is regarded as being deeply implausible, he warned.

“What we have to remember is there are quite deep-seated reasons why the industry has come to be so reliant on an EU workforce. It has a lot to do with flexibility, and the aversion that many people have towards the anti-social hours within the industry; the image of the industry in our country as an industry compared to it being seen as a profession in many continental European countries. It reflects decades of neglect of vocational education in this country. So there are many powerful reasons – some of them social, some cultural – as to why we have such a reliance on an EU workforce. So if you have a situation where free movement ends suddenly with nothing in its place because 96% of the EU nationals who work inside our industry would not get into the country under the immigration rules for non-EU nationals” he said.

The BHA’s response has been two-fold, while recognising the very demanding political environment in which it is operating.

He explained: “The first issue is that the country voted for change last year. The BHA was absolutely neutral in that campaign for good reason. When you think of the association’s member companies and our customers and team members, 50% were one way 50% the other. Aerospace and telecoms and

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car manufacturers might have had a quite partial view of the referendum, but we quite deliberately were independent. More than anything what we are calling for is a graduated change. We need continuing access to the workforce but we understand the public desire for change, and therefore there needs to be a gradual reduction in the number of EU workers that we recruit each year. That needs to be spread out over a number of years. Whether or not at the end of that period we actually have enough people is highly doubtful.

“The second issue is that we are leading a 10-year campaign to recruit more people into the industry from the UK,” he said.

The deadline has now passed for submissions to the migration advisory committee in terms of a new immigration system and an Immigration Bill is going to be passed within the next few months. “That is fundamental to commercial success,” said Guthrie.

“Whatever your success on employee retention, operating margins because of pay rates, HR costs and visa costs and work permit costs are going to come under relentless pressure for the next few years, and businesses are going to find it very difficult to deal with this challenge.”

Following Guthrie’s overall analysis, the audience then heard a panel discussion on Brexit, eager to hear how opinion had shifted. The issue of staffing was key, with Jeremy Robinson, partner, Watson Farley Williams, telling delegates: “Immigration is a fundamental issue to resolve. The question of bringing in visitors to the EU must also be addressed. Whilst we can't expect anything from our government as a sector, we can keep the pressure up over aviation and migration.”

Mark Essex, director, public policy, KPMG, added: “There aren't many certainties around Brexit, but the cost of wages is going up. Rather than lobbying government, I would look at what I can do to mitigate what can only be upward wage pressure. Retention is important. Productivity and innovation is important.

“We have businesses who are assuming a Brexit cliff edge and actively planning for that.”

At one of the many workshops which took place during the event, attendees heard from Eproductive and the University of Surrey that the number of hours worked by UK employees had gone down, in addition to the number of UK employees, while labour from the EU was up and the number of hours EU labour had worked was up.

Professor Andrew Lockwood, University of Surrey said he couldn’t possibly comment on whether EU workers are more productive than UK workers. But he said: “Revenue over the period went up as labour went down, which must mean that productivity has increased.”

DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 13

core issues

R

INNS FACE MARKETING SHAKEUP

evenue by Design director Ally Northfield introduced a session on the evolving dynamics of OTAs at HOSPACE last month by asserting that understanding the dynamics between the asset management ownership relationship with the online travel environment and the hotel management is going to become increasingly important as the relationship with OTAs evolves.

There has been a lot more engagement of owners and assert managers in the distribution environment in terms of cost of distribution in the past few years, Northfield said. She also identified a significant level of engagement from various competition authorities in different countries.

“The dynamics of these players have been such that the OTA relationship has come under a great deal more scrutiny and the evolution of the consumer role in this relationship is also quite important,” she told delegates.

“Most discussion in the past has been related to cost, not least that of customer acquisition."

"In 2016 some 10 brands came out with e-book direct strategy. So did it work and does it pay to book direct: how much did it cost the brans to book the customer and in the long run is it going to continue to work. From the independent hotelier perspective, one school of thought is that the OTA booking should be viewed as a marketing cost and that if that costs weren’t there and the distribution weren’t there then independent hotels would have to employ other people to generate the business brought in by OTAs,” she suggested.

Chairman of the hotel marketing association Steve Lowy presented the perspective of the independent hotelier encompassing inns across the UK. “If you look back to 2007 when the iPhone was launched there are some small hotels that only now are just getting used to having a website that works on a mobile. As an industry it has truly been behind the times in terms of technology,” he began.

14 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

Online travel agents (OTAs) are finally under investigation by the competition commission. In the meantime inns must invest to regain the marketing initiative.

Often during a recession marketing and training are the two things that are cut from a budget, he said. “In 2007, when booking.com first pushed itself out, it was the start of the last big recession, which coincided with a big worldwide tech push.

“At the same time people were pulling back on technology investment and training. That is why the OTAs won the battle: partly because of the technology, but partly also because the timing was perfect for them. The difference between booking.com and other OTAs is that they are a technology company that has chosen hotels as a vertical compared to a travel company trying to do technology.”

During the intervening years commissions slowly crept up and it was considered manageable, then the pound weakened and all of a sudden they found it accounted for 40% of their business, which was too much, he said.

What has to happen to address this is never going to be a quick fix, he warned. “Any marketing plan will take perhaps two to three years of work. Small hotels now need to look at what they are spending each year on commission. If you were to reduce it by just 2% what cost would that be? Hotels are good at top line analysis but if you look deeper, what are their marketing costs and investment levels in staff straining?” he asked.

It is important to understand the message that will encourage people to book direct, Lowy said, and he suggested the small independent may to be able to give loyalty points.

“Let’s say you are selling a room for £100. Take of VAT and commission you are left with £60 net. Add breakfast for two - that’s probably £5 a head - so you are down to £50: a 50% margin before taking into account the rest of your costs.

“But that’s the quick win. What happened during the recession was booking.com became a painless way to drive the top line. In fact their margins were worsening because their average room rate was not growing by 20%, but their costs were 20%. www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

core issues “In terms of implementing a marketing plan, coming up with the concept can take as little time as a week, but to drive it successfully is not automatic nor simply a digital thing. It’s online, offline, staff training, having everyone in the team particularly in an independent hotel really driving for this direct business.

If someone calls up or books a wedding, send them a message saying please make sure you book direct, for example.

“The problem is that relying on booking.com you can make money while you sleep, which is the easiest way of doing it.

Understandably to begin with in the early days of booking.com independent hospitality managers were not concerned because they had cut staff yet were still getting business in.”

That was fine, he said, until the level of that function became so high that you could probably benefit from employing a marketing person, rebuild your website, and have a fulltime social media manager.

“Analysing that total cost of sales on any transaction via the OTA channel and then making a scientific calculation of what you should do next is a better way of going about things, rather than just saying ‘I hate OTAs’, because there is a need for them as they get to places you can’t reach,” he warned.

“If there is no reason to book direct then they won’t.” He also warned that if an operation such as a boutique hotel does not have a presentable website or the booking engine does not work, its owners are doing themselves no favours.

“You should take a more eclectic view rather than, as has happened for years, saying ‘We hate OTAs’,” he said. “Why don’t you just manage your inventory base and have strategies for each channel. It feels very difficult to compete, but if you have a two to three year plan and employ marketing people and perhaps work with an agency, then there is a bit of front end investment which you don’t need with booking.com. The industry has become somewhat complacent through having relied on OTAs, he said.

“If you look back just 15 to 20 years, independent hotels, including inns, were very creative.” He suggested investment in a marketing budget in addition to paying commission to OTAs may be a gamble but if you win customers that way they will soon become invaluable loyal customers.

“You might also offer incentives, such as, ‘If you stay more than two nights we will bring you a pot of fresh coffee to your room every morning before 8am,’ or ‘you get one piece of dry cleaning through your stay’. That would cost them very little, and far less than an OTA’s commission,” he said. “If you are great at hospitality you should really push the boat out for direct customers. Let booking.com customers know that if they book direct they will get that extra mile. It is real tangible added experiences that work.”

Small hotels should start analysing and devising strategies to bring a bit more control over their direct bookings, he said.

“By this I mean a consumer selecting an inn to stay in, having gone to multiple aggregator sites, might think he or she has done a really good job of finding the best hotel rate in the bets www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

hotel that suits all their needs. So why is the competition authority looking at that area? What is going on in the consumer buying process?”

He explained; “If you use a search tool such as comaprethemarket to look for the best deal for electricity gas, it is overwhelming because there are so many different rates, options and contracts for ultimately the same product.

“If a consumer looks without all the pop-ups, meta-searches and OTAs, ultimately wherever they look the guest room they are searching for is the same price. As a consumer you are not finding the best price, you are finding the only price.

“Many of these OTAs say ‘Best price online’ when in fact it is the only price online. Yet to the consumer that is not what they generally believe. Someone in a pub may say: “I found this amazing deal on booking. com”, and they are amazed when they are introduced to the fact it is the only price.

Even interviewed by the competition commission and explaining this to them he said he was met with amazement. “They came back with, ‘I’ve been through that myself. I always thought booking.com was one of the cheapest,’” he said.

People search 10 to 15 sites, according to Google, in order to book a high-end experience such as an inn, and they have therefore probably forgotten some of the sites they have visited along the way, and they probably don’t write down the prices, he said. “So they use these aggregators to book the best price, but when they look more closely it is all the same. When they become loyal it's because they like that booking channel process rather than the hotel or B&B itself, and most importantly the price.

“That is where the competition authority is most interested in its investigation, the issue of transparency. They are also interested in the issue of the fact this is a consumer issue. Rate parity is driven by the hospitality industry and the authority prefers it to be consumer-led for the government wants to gain popularity and if it wins them a few extra votes then that is helpful and it shows they are fighting for everyone.

The competition authority is looking at the hospitality sector much as it did the energy sector 10 years ago, because that sector’s participants were colluding with each other and the hotel sector is doing the same."

The competition authority’s investigation into OTAs could have opened a can of worms, and rate parity may soon be a thing of the past, as has happened in France and some other countries, he said.

But he concluded: “The way that will change revenue management will be up to the individual innkeeper.”

DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 15

6 Ë É8 6 Ë Ê 8

l a i c i f i Artintelligence y t i l a t i p s o h in

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6 Ă‹ É8 6 Ă‹ ĂŠ 8 Enterprise software provider Infor hospitality sales director Calum McIndoe tells Innkeeper that artiďŹ cial intelligence is going to play an increasingly strong role in guest accommodation businesses

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rtificial intelligence (AI) and hospitality is a subject that features in just about every publication and trade event today.

The subset of AI is machine learning.

We already use AI and machine learning every day. When Apple’s Siri automatically organises photos and tags people in them, it is using machine learning When Netflix recommends movies or Spotify recommends a song to us, it is using machine learning.

AI has already entered the mainstream and made our lives easier.

There are two key questions hospitality has concerning AI. Firstly, what is AI? And secondly, how is it going to affect us?

We see AI in a couple of different ways: Firstly asking a computer to do something, such as, “Alexa turn on the lights,� “Alexa, turn on Radio 4 please,� and so forth. AI is the ability to ask the computer to run a simple task or report.

Secondly, AI may be asking the computer to do something more complex using the huge power available to us today.

Humans can speak 150 words per minute but can type on average only 40 words per minute. Google estimates that in three years’ time some 50% of all web searches will be made through images or speech.

According to a recent McKinsey report, employees spend on average almost two hours every day, or 10 hours per week, searching and gathering information. Annually that’s a lot of wasted time.

Traditionally the way we would get a computer to do something was to write down an algorithm explaining in painstaking detail how to do it.

But machine learning is composed of algorithms that enable software to train itself to perform tasks, like speech and image recognition, by exposing it to vast amounts of data.

For example, for image recognition, we feed into the algorithm millions of images that are annotated, and it learns to recognise them. That learning can be reinforced by users, for example, by clicking on an image from a search result, thus confirming that the algorithm was correct.

No human programing is used. The software automatically learns from the data, accumulates knowledge, and keeps getter smarter.

So how will AI or machine Learning affect us in hospitality?

Surveys suggest some 40% of tasks in the finance operation at an inn could be replaced by AI and bots by 2020.

AI will automate low-complexity tasks such as invoice-matching, expense report reconciliation, journal reconciliations, creating consolidated reports, and even helping close the books.

For the marketing function at a UK inn, for example, AI can identify the next best offer, which customer is most likely to leave, what is the best lead to follow first, and other such key indicators. Additionally AI could be used to search through the vast amounts of data we have available to us in disparate systems and provide us with a real time up-to-date guest profile.

I predict AI will be the next step for revenue management solutions in being able to define for instance what rates to sell and what business to take.

In a UK , AI can be connected to machines through the Internet of Things, or IoT. This is when you connect up your fridge so you can tell on your phone what items it has in it because of near field identification labels meaning it can you when you are low on milk, or indeed when your boiler is connected to the internet and provides readings so that AI can read them and monitor it. That feeds granular machine readings – temperature and vibration - into predictive maintenance algorithm.

In this scenario, failure is predicted in a boiler, and AI automatically takes action based on learned experience.

AI orders the spare part needed in the procurement application. It creates a work order for the machine to be serviced and then notifies you to let you know what it has done.

Are there any departments where AI will not have an impact? At a recent conference I attended in Manchester there was a discussion around housekeeping and food & beverage and AI. This is potentially where we would see more indirect impact in such areas as the supply chain, from taking stock of sheets or beverage items, to placing orders to driverless deliveries where the delivery route is optimised depending on multiple factors.

So is AI here now for hospitality? Yes it is, and in fact I would say that most of your IT suppliers have it already, or it is on their road map.

DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 17

training

Training – D PLVƃ or a J must?

The Tourism Business managing director Martin Evans, organiser of the National Hotel Marketing Conference tells Innkeeper magazine of the importance of investment in staff training 18 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

ust as the political parties have their “conference season” so do we in the hotel industry, and with it now having drawn to a close, it’s worth considering the real health of the sector.

With this year’s occupancies at record figures for hotels and B&B’s across the UK - Expedia alone saw a 20% increase in domestic trips between July and September - it’s easy to fall into the thinking that Brexit and the consequent low value of the pound will mean more domestic and incoming tourists staying with us for years into the future, and leading to continued high occupancies and strong turnover.

But that would be a mistake. You probably know the phrase ‘familiarity breeds contempt’. What’s more appropriate here is ‘success breeds complacency’. Working as I do in marketing in the hotel sector, I see this all the time. Whilst the number of people who practise marketing in hotels has increased exponentially in the last ten years – and the opportunities to learn and debate the subject have also grown – in fact we’re in danger of becoming lazy in our approach to what is one of the most important functions of any business. And we’re lazy partly through lack of knowledge.

First of all, we’ve all become used to relying on the OTAs (online travel agents) as a strong source of our new business. In fact, some hoteliers seem to depend on these OTAs in the same way that I need a coffee in the morning – and it’s a lazy and not-so-smart approach to business generation.

Owners of luxury B&Bs, guest houses and inns are in danger of succumbing to the practice of selling ever more rooms on OTAs at up to 25% commission, or promoting discounted short breaks on Groupon, even in the summer months (you’d be surprised how many hotels do this). And of course many hotels and B&Bs are still sending the same marketing email to their whole database (not considering recipients’ different buying habits, where they live or even if they’re already booked for next month). And with industry-average open rates of only 20-40%, and very few of your Facebook fans seeing each of your posts, this means that at least six out of ten of your guests are not reading your communications.

We really need to stop and take a breath if our apathy isn’t to become terminal – even in a bull market. Yes, there’s a place for these distribution channels – but so there is for a properly planned

approach to marketing. Which hoteliers can say they have a well-resourced, two-year marketing strategy in place? And a tactical marketing plan for your monthly marketing activity and your top three or four market segments?

But then who has been trained to deliver these things? Of course, the major hotel groups all have their in-house training resources. But for independent hotels and inns, it’s not so easy - yet it’s certainly not impossible. Many tourist boards and local enterprise partnerships offer excellent training courses that don’t cost the earth. As do local colleges and other organisations like Chambers of Commerce and BIDs (business improvement districts).

And why stop at training in marketing? Rather than a marketing plan, perhaps your first plan should be a training plan. For you and your staff. If Brexit has already taught us one thing, it’s that we can’t rely on easy access to staff in future years. This is the time for you to draw up a TNA (training needs analysis) for yourself and your team, and to take your team with you on a programme of CPD (continuing professional development). Believe me, the majority of your staff will thank you for it and may well stay with you longer as a result. And you’ll become better motivated yourself.

Even without considering the “craft skills” which every hospitality business needs in its workforce, there’s a need for us all to brush up regularly on the latest techniques in marketing, social media, GDPR (new data protection regulations), finance, personnel and other “professional” business skills. Give your team the training they need. I once saw a hotelier inadvertently show his staff that the training budget line in his profit & loss account for every month across a full year was zero.” No training for 12 months then. A big mistake.

The message should instead be to invest in training and become an even more professional business owner. Give yourself the skills to create a better planned marketing strategy, resource it properly (hotels spend an average of up to 10% of turnover on sales and marketing), train your team, and turn a “miss” into a “must” and reap the benefits whatever the economy and political situation throws at us. martin@thetourismbusiness.com www.thetourismbusiness.com www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

training Work is both an economic and a social activity,

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taff employment must be recognised as being a social as well as an economic activity, head of HR at the Research Development Institute of Employment told an audience of innkeepers and hotel and bed & breakfast managers last month.

Businesses in the sector need to evaluate data related to their staff more effectively, he warned.

Summarising the concerns of HR teams in the hospitality sector at Hospace 2017, Stephen Bevan said: “It strikes at the heart of some really important challenges that many businesses face and it is an area where the HR profession is in some ways evolving.

We need to look at the way some organisation use data about people in order to improve a range of desirable business outcomes where people are the differentiating factor including performance, engagement and customer satisfaction.

“There are still residual stereotypes regarding the HR profession in the hospitality sector, that it has not evolved much over the years. Many still think it has not evolved much beyond the old welfare model of personal management, all about being a shoulder to cry on. Some people even believe HR folk are innumerate, or that they avoid anything to do with the quantitative, and we hope to disavow them of that view,” he said.

Quantifying HR metrics and looking at financial figures associated with the stocks and flows of people in an organisation is an inherently dehumanising activity, as is any talk of human capital, said Bevan.

“It takes the human side out of things if you get too quantitative and analytical about it.”

Within the service sector quality, skill, engagement and the effective stewardship of people can be a massively differentiating factor in a competitive market and the professional analytical management of the HR space can be highly business critical, he said. “The things that differentiate high and poor performing organisations are very much to do with managing people.

“To do that well requires not just data but also insight. You can capture all the information you like for your IT system but unless you have the insight on how to use it, how it will inform strategic business decisions then it is probably not a worthwhile activity.” www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

says HR chief

And he stressed: “We have to recognise that work is both an economic and a social activity. What motivates employees to join you, to turn up, to perform and to stay with you can’t always be reduced to an economic model, nor is it an area where behavioural science has all the answers.”

He said good people data can be critical both to understanding and predicting employee behaviour and can explain why ostensibly similar organisations perform so differently. “HR data can make the intangible more tangible. This doesn’t mean dancing slavishly to the tune of the finance director. HR professionals should work in partnership with the finance

function using the same sort of language. The intelligent use of reporting HR data can certainly communicate the costs and benefits of HR to the business,” he stressed.

“It is also important to recognise that not all accounting conventions work quite in the same way as people. For example, people you employ should be seen as an appreciating asset and often we do not see them as that in terms of our investment in skills, training and so on.

“This is a role that HR professionals are continuously trying to assert within their businesses because they can provide massive support to the way the organisation will be competitive, and they look at the people dimension of that and try to integrate it with the way the rest of the organisation is run,” he concluded.

DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 19

vodka

20 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

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vodka

With craft distilleries fuelling the gin boom Matthew Attwood asks if vodka – still the UK’s favourite spirit – could be next in line for a renaissance.

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any traditional inns, with their emphasis on home-from-home hospitality and top-quality food and drink with a local slant, have participated with gusto in the gin boom of recent years. The enduring popularity of local ingredients has bolstered the popularity of craft gin at the bar, and landlords in most British regions are able to offer a gin with local botanicals, from douglas fir in the Cairngorms to Yorkshire lavender and Cornish samphire.

Vodka producers are doing their best to compete.

The brewer and wine merchant Adnams, itself a beneficiary of the gin boom, offers no fewer than four vodkas distilled from grains produced near its Suffolk HQ. These include a peppery rye variety and an amber vodka made with barley, wheat and oats, aged in oak barrels and offering tones of vanilla, white chocolate and coconut.

If the tasting characteristics of East Anglian grains sound arcane, the West Dorset producer Black Cow offers the world’s only vodka made purely from milk, conferring a “unique creamy character”, while other small-batch producers offer a seemingly limitless range of flavoured varieties covering the spectrum of the human palate, from tea to toffee. The distillers Blackdown in Sussex even offer a vodka made with sap from the silver birch tree which has, we are assured, a “a delicate sweetness”.

Some of the following winds propelling the gin market also apply to vodka. Indeed, vodka was in at the beginning of the small-batch revolution when William Chase, the Herefordshire farmer behind Tyrells crisps, obtained a distilling license in 2008, overturning the previous ban on new stills below a massive 18 hectolitres in size.

Winning gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition a mere two years later, Chase has since increased his offering to encompass a new vodka made from local cider apples and flavoured varieties including marmalade, rhubarb and a smoked version.

So, the vodka revolution is upon us? Not quite.

Mark Reynolds, founder of the Three Cheers Pub Company in South London, which operates the Tommyfield, Kennington’s only boutique hotel, is unconvinced.

“At the moment, gin is holding all the cards.

People who buy gin are interested in botanicals and provenance but with vodka it is more about brand.

They want to buy into the image,” he said.

While the vodka brands are trying to change this, with their inventive approach to ingredients, Reynolds is unsure of customer demand: “I think the consumer is still some way behind this.”

James Pidgeon, owner of the Weary Ploughman Inn near Brixham in South Devon, had a 30-year career in the wine and sprits business, including long stretches as a specialist spirits buyer, before becoming a landlord.

He believes flavoured vodkas have given way to gin in recent years, with drinkers preferring the subtle impact on flavour of the botanicals added to distilling vessels. For those interested in process, this is a more enticing prospect than drinks in which the flavour has simply been added to the spirit.

“You can get wonderful vodkas,” says Pidgeon, who stocks Black Cow, “but it is harder to get that distinctive feel from the distilling process, and taking a neutral spirit and adding a flavour is not the same thing.”

Still number one Small-batch, craft producers are of course only part of the story for the on-trade in spirits – even if they punch above their weight with the clientelè serviced by the inn market – and the headline numbers show that vodka retains its hegemony by a massive margin.

Smirnoff Red remains the nation’s favourite spirit, accounting for 10.7% of combined UK on and off-trade sales in 2016, according to the market intelligence publisher Euromonitor International, while the Wine and Spirit Trade Association’s figures shows that on-trade gin sales were less than a third of vodka sales last year.

At first glance, this bears out the optimism of many producers, such as Black Cow’s Kate Harrison, who insists that vodka – dominated as it is by well-resourced multinationals – is faring very well amid the gin boom.

“The spirits market is focused on delivering heritage, authenticity and provenance stories for consumers,” she says, meaning that some of the trends to have benefited the gin market also apply to vodka.

But comparing last year’s numbers with 2015’s tells a slightly different story. Vodka sales were largely static year on year, with volume down by 1% and value up by 1%, while gin saw a volume increase of DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 21

vodka ard, one premium and one flavoured with vanilla.

As the Shears Inn focuses on food rather than casual drinkers, their consumption tends to be based on quality rather than quantity, and he sells most vodka as a base for cocktails such as classic and espresso martinis. Premium vodkas have little resonance with his clientele.

The more traditional end of the market may have to wait for a shift in fashion, but Kate Harrison is certain that there is a place for new entrants to make an impact on the on-trade.

How, though, can new entrants compete with both the market behemoths in vodka and the smallbatch gin wizards?

Harrison is clear: “By producing a fantastic liquid!

Black Cow Vodka makes a beautiful martini – and pubs are drawn to the liquid first.”

She also believes in a deeper commercial symbiosis than the simple one between buyer and seller: Black Cow profiles pubs and bars, giving exposure to individual bartenders and the creations they have developed with the vodka.

Another British vodka producer to have won gold in the San Francisco World Spirits Awards, Black Cow is very much in the premium category. That can help with using distribution as a brand awareness strategy.

“Distribution is another way for small producers to differentiate from large brand owners – Black Cow is sold in the best bars in our focus markets,” says Harrison.

Premium appeal 12% and a 17% increase in value. Should last year’s relative performance become an established trend, it would take 14 years and three months for on-trade gin sales to overtake those of vodka.

This, of course, is a long way off, and makes the very big assumption that the gin boom is only gathering steam. But clearly the momentum, currently, is not with vodka, and the big differential with gin is the craft explosion.

“Vodka isn’t keeping up” Fashion offers a partial explanation, says Bertie Dulis, co-licensee of the Shears Inn near Marlborough in Wiltshire.

“A shot of vodka used to be trendy, but it’s just not anymore,” he says.

“There are just so many gins now, and with premium tonics like fever tree also available, vodka isn’t keeping up.”

Dulis keeps 12 gins and three vodkas – one stand22 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

That approach – depicting Black Cow as a premium, local brand with an international reputation – gives it a mass-market appeal without diluting its attraction to innkeepers such as the Weary Ploughman’s James Pidgeon. He keeps it with a Ukrainian wheat vodka, which he presents to interested customers as a comparison.

The Weary Ploughman also offers Smirnoff, but some landlords are so persuaded of the appeal of premium brands that they offer them exclusively.

Samantha Clegg, owner/manager of the Globe Inn at Beaford in North Devon is one: she offers Stolichnaya as the house vodka, and Iceland’s Reyka vodka, which 20% of customers ask for specifically.

“People don’t want a house double anymore,” she says. “They look at the spirit shelf and choose a brand rather than a spirit.”

With vodka sales nearing those of gin, this approach is working at the Globe.

Clegg also takes a proactive approach to seasonality. Her customers do not see vodka as a winter warmer, preferring whisky or liqueurs such as Baileys, but she has shored up demand with a winter www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

vodka

on-trade spirits sales, 2015 - 2016 gin volume (000 hls)

gin value (£m)

vodka volume (000 hls)

vodka value (£m)

total spirits volume (000hls)

total spirits volume (£m)

2015

49

548

178

1859

546

5771

2016

55

639

177

1879

552

5999

% change

12%

17%

-1%

1%

1%

4%

cocktail: Zubrowka Bison Grass Vodka, cinnamon and apple juice.

The cocktail also has an element of local appeal, she explains: “We purchased some locally produced apple juice and we were looking for something to complement it. We like this vodka and know it’s great with apple juice. It’s also a bit different to the other vodkas we offer.”

Mark Reynolds at the Three Cheers Pub Company agrees on seasonality – vodka sales dip as people turn to sloe gin, whisky and warming liqueurs – but he has equal faith in the power of a premium brand.

“70% of our customers tend to ask for a brand and 30% lean towards our house pour, Absolut,” he says. “The majority of customers certainly know what they want, which is great. I think premium brands are growing all the time and I have no doubt that if you can get the right people drinking a product and the product is good then you can command a premium price.”

This, of course, depends on the clientelè, as research from Euromonitor International shows total vodka sales in the UK firmly skewed – at the moment – towards lower pricing platforms, but with indications of a growing appreciation of quality. www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

Premium and super-premium vodkas accounted for 10.3% of sales in 2011, rising to only 13% over the following five years. The bigger move has been from economy vodkas to mid-priced alternatives: the latter now accounts for half of all sales, a seven percentage-point increase from 2011, while economy purchases have dipped by nine percentage points exactly, to a 35.6% market share last year.

Gin is still the on-trade’s big change story, but a market clearly exists for landlords who wish to participate in vodka’s answer to the juniper boom.

Premium brands certainly have a part to play, especially those offering local appeal, while a creative approach has rewards for those willing to experiment with cocktails and recipes.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is overcoming what one landlord, who asked not to be named, describes as vodka’s image problem.

“It’s what people drink when they want to get drunk quickly,” he says. “Especially people who don’t like the taste of alcohol very much. Once you get them trying some different vodkas with they see there are distinct taste differences between varieties, but there’s huge resistance to sitting down and giving a few a try.”

DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 23

winter warmers

Winter Warmer s Mulled wine cocktail Mulled wine evokes a heartening image of a warm, sweet and spicy red wine poured in the warmth of an indoors bar when it is cold and perhaps snowing outside. But we stumbled across this recipe for chilled mulled wine, and our guests all found it very moreish.

A marked change from the traditional mulled wine but, to our surprise, every bit as uplifting and, with no risk of alcohol evaporation, it is enhanced both by the aniseed flavor of the star anise and the sliced citrus fruit and orange zest.

100g light muscovado sugar 1 star anise 1 cinnamon stick 4 cloves 150ml water 1 lemon 2 satsumas or clementines 150ml cointreau 750ml pinot noir Twist of orange zest and star anise to serve Put 100g light muscovado sugar in a pan with 1 star anise, 1 cinnamon stick, 4 cloves and 150ml water.

Bring slowly to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

Simmer for 2 mins, then pour into a large jug and leave to cool. Add 1 lemon and 2 clementines, both thinly sliced, to the jug along with 150ml Cointreau and a 750ml bottle light red wine, such as a Beaujolais. Stir well, then cover and chill for at least 2 hrs or overnight if you can.

Serve chilled or over ice, with a twist of orange zest and a star anise.

If you’d prefer to serve a traditional warm mulled wine simply warm through without boiling and serve in heatproof glasses.

24 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

Christmas GINgle A festive, fruity and spicy Gin cocktail from South Devon. Last month we told readers of a planned Christmas Cocktail from South Devon distillery Salcombe Gin. Now it’s December, we can bring you the recipe.

50ml Salcombe Gin ‘Start Point’ 75ml Luscombe Cranberry Crush 100ml Luscombe Passionate Ginger Beer 5ml fresh lime juice 3 thin slices of fresh ginger 10 fresh or frozen cranberries es A sprig of fresh mint Ice Add Salcombe Gin, fresh lime juice, me ju uice, five cranberries and two slices of fresh fressh ginger to a Boston shaker glass.

Add ice and shake vigorously. usly.

Fill a large highball with ice. Double strain the mixture over the ice into the glass using a Hawthorne strainer and fine sieve. Add dd Luscombe Cranberry Crush rush followed by Luscombe Passionate Ginger Beer and stir. Garnish with five cranberries, a sprig of fresh mint and the remaining ng fresh ginger, sliced intoo thin julienne matchsticks. icks.

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winter warmers

s l i a t k c o C Tequila all g in popularity across in ow gr is ila qu te m Premiu r of brands are a growing numbe pes demographics. There e winter cocktail reci re th te ci e w re He e. availabl ium you can use any prem from Patrón, although it. e from 100% agave fru tequila – that is, mad

A touch of evil This citrusy and modern n digestif is not half-bad, it's actually alll good. od.

Espresso Society Perk up the evening with this sweet, spirit-forward coffee cocktail that has a modern tequila twist 25g Patrón XO Cafe 15g Patrón Citrónge Orange 25g whisky 30g Fresh espresso 30g heavy whipping cream 10g salted caramel syrup Good quality chocolate for garnish Combine XO Cafe, whiskey, Patrón Citrónge and espresso in a shaker with ice.

Shake vigorously to chill and combine.

Strain into a small rocks glass.

To a clean shaker, add Heavy cream and caramel syrup and shake vigorously to whip together.

Carefully layer the cream over the top of the cocktail and garnish with grated chocolate.

45g Patrón Añejo 60g Warmed apple cider der 15g Fresh lemon juicee 15g PX Sherry 1 dash Black Strap rum um Grated cardamom for garnish Combine liquid ingredients ents in a mug and garnish with grated cardamom.

Touchdown Toddy You’ll want to go for two after one sip p of this classic, spirit-forward cocktail that’ll keep p you warm all season long 60g Patron Anejo 45g lemon Juice 30g honey 85g hot water 1 cocktail spoon ground cinnamon on 3 drops vanilla extract In the bottom of a sturdy mug,, combine a pinch of ground cinnamon, nnamon, mon honey, hot water. Stir to combine. Add Anejo, lemon juice, vanilla extract. Stir to combine all ingredients.

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DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 25

winter warmers

y k s i h w m u Pr emi cocktails

Glengoyne Julip Glengoyne Cask Strength Gomme Syrup Fresh Mint Rhubarb Bitters Crushed Ice You don’t want to hide the strength or the main profile of the cask strength, so how about a traditional Julip? Laced with mint and finished with Rhubarb bitters, this is a true whiskylover’s drink.

The Tamdhu 10-year-old ld Manhattann Pour double measure (50ml) of Tamdhu 10 Year Old Add one measure (25ml) 5ml)) of sweet vermouth to complement omp plement the unique sherry flavour avou ur Add two dashes of bitters bitte ters and stir with ice Strain and garnish h with ith an orange rind.

Smoky Welsh Martini Penderyn Distillery was reopened a few years ago reviving the Welsh whisky market. Get a taste of Wales in your winter warmer.

75ml Brecon Gin 5ml Penderyn Peated Whisky Simply pour the ingredients into a whisky tumbler, add ice and stir. Enjoy!

26 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

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winter warmers St Nick's Festive Fizz 50ml Johnnie Walker® Red Label® Blended Scotch Whisky 150ml Schweppes Slimline Elderflower Tonic 1 slice orange 5 cloves Add ice to a glass.

Fill a highball glass with ice cubes.

Pour in Johnnie Walker Red Label.

Add 50ml Johnnie Walker Red Label to the glass.

Top up with Schweppes Slimline Elderflower Tonic.

Pour in 150ml Schweppes Slimline Elderflower Tonic, or enough to fill the glass.

Garnish with a clovestudded orange slice.

Cut a slice of orange and push 5 cloves into the slice..

Place on top of the drink to garnish.

Add 10ml of lemon juice and 10ml of Grenadine to bring out that flower power!

Old Fashionedd Christmas 35ml of Smirnoff No. 21 Vodka dkaa 50ml Apple Juice 1tsp Cranberry Sauce 1pinch(es) Cinnamon Powder er 1piece(s) Orange Zest 1piece(s) Star Anise Fill a glass with ice.

Fill a glass mug with ice cubes. es.

Add Smirnoff No. 21 Vodka, ap apple pple juice, cranberry sauce and orange zest est into the glass.

Using a jigger, measure 35ml Smirnoff No. 21 Vodka, 50ml apple juice, 1 teaspoon cranberry sauce and orange zest into glass.

Stir thoroughly.

Stir with a bar spoon until the mixture is well combined.

Garnish with cinnamon and star anise.

Sprinkle cinnamon powder over the drink and place a star anise on top to garnish.

Baileys Chocolat Luxe 50ml Baileys Chocolat Luxe 1 piece(s) Raspberry Half-fill a glass with ice. Place three ice cubes into too a wine glass.

Add Baileys Chocolat Luxe. Using a jigger, measure 50ml Baileys Chocolat Luxe into the glass. laass.

Add a skewered raspberry to garnish. Carefully pierce a single raspberry with an elegant skewerr known as an ‘attelet’, and place across the rim off the glass to garnish.

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DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 27

cognac

Rising spirits

28 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

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cognac Cognac is in a good place.

The UK is the fourth market for the French spirit, according to the BNIC (Bureau National Interprofessionel du Cognac) data, with a growth of 3.6% in 2016/2017.

T

here are elegant and sophisticated brands of the drink that come from cognac-producing families going back generations, such as Jean Fillioux Reserve Familiale. The Fillioux family have been creating Cognac in the Domaine de la Pouyade for five generations and its estate is located in the heart of the Grande Champagne region, considered the premier cru in the world of Cognac.

Distillerie Du Peyrat Organic Cognac XO comes from the Du Peyrat family, which has been in the cognac business for 300 years. The current owner, Jean-François Rault, has committed the distillery to exclusively producing organic Cognac, made from 100% organic grapes in the surrounding area.

Consumers are becoming more knowledgeable about cognac and the evolving consumption pattern is driven by brands with substance and authenticity and products with heritage. There is plenty to keep your bar manager busy searching the finest cognac to offer your discerning guest.

The House of Martell is part of Pernod Ricard Group, and more specifically, its prestige entity MMPJ (Martell Mumm Perrier-Jouët) since 2001.

Supporting the suggestion that cognac sales are on the rise, Pernod Ricard Group spokesperson Elsa Sourice says Martell is improving its performance with a return to growth - 6% organic sales growth and 5% volumes according to the latest Pernod Ricard annual results.

Tips for bar staff You should store all cognacs in a vertical position. Avoid storing your cognac under the light as it can damage the cognac hue.

Cognac should not be kept at a temperature above 25° Celsius, this it can damage the taste. You should encourage your patrons to take time to taste and appreciate their cognac. More importantly you should know that the best way to taste a great cognac it’s your way. Encourage your guests to forget the rules and be curious!

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Paris-based Sourice tells Innkeeper magazine: “Martell, as the oldest of the great Cognac houses with 300 years of heritage, has just launched products mixing craft and heritage in a contemporary way, like Martell VS Single Distillery.

“We believe that cognac lovers are looking for real product benefit and meaningful innovation that bring clear product benefit beyond age statement, such as Martell VS Single Distillery, Martell Cordon Bleu are not only VS, VSOP, XO.” The desire for premium, luxury products will continue growing across the world, she suggests.

In the Pernod Ricard portfolio Martell Cordon Bleu and Martell XO are two of Martell superpremium cognacs.

Complex taste Sourice says: “Martell Cordon Bleu is a unique cognac in the XO category. It is endowed with beautiful complexity and rich aromas, making it a legendary cognac. It is the cognac for true connoisseurs and has acquired legendary status since its creation.

It is an explosion of deliciously fruited, spice notes, elegance linked to aromatic richness. Its high proportion of Borderies marks this blend, expanding on its caramelised character with the smoothness of sweet spices, gingerbread and roasted cocoa beans.

“Martell XO has a dominant characteristic of Grande and Petite Champagne and offers a pleasant body and structure in the mouth for great cognac lovers to enjoy. A spicy, rich crescendo starting with the mellow elegance of the Borderies, followed by the intensity and finesse typical of Grande Champagne eaux-de-vie. This Cognac gives a mouth feel of a rounded and fruity on the palate (notes of fig and walnut) followed by the characteristic power and finesse of eaux-de-vie from Grande Champagne.”

The result, she says, is a long and silken finish.

Each house of cognac has its own specificities.

All Martell cognacs for example are described by the supplier as being made from “uncompromising choices in their quest for absolute quality”. In the Extra category, from Martell iconic Cordon Bleu to Martell Chanteloup Perspective or Martell XO, to other categories, Sourice says they all bear the trademark structure and the elegance of Martell cognacs.

“At the origin of the Martell style are two decisions – the secrets of a signature instantly recognizable for its delicacy and elegance, subtlety and generosity,” she says.

Martell practices double distillation of exclusively clear wines. Sourice explains: “After vinification, the wines are left untouched for a week to prepare them for decantation: the lees are removed, resulting DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 29

cognac Categorising cognac Cognac is widely recognised as the finest spirit to be distilled from grapes. VS stands for very special and VSOP for very special old pale. XO means it has been aged at least six years. Extra cognac is also aged six years but is a cognac superior to an XO. Distributors generally split them into two categories: standard versus old & rare.

In the standard category, a Courvoisier VS Cognac may typically retail at £22.95, a Martell VS cognac around £23.50 and a Hennessy VS Jonone Limited Edition around £34. Still in the standard category, a Remy Martin Louis XIII Jeroboam sells for £24,000 – that’s £8,000 a litre.

In the old & rare category, a 450cl bar bottle of Martell VS cognac may sell for £185 while a 69.2cl bottle of Remy Martin VSOP may sell for £200. At the other extreme The Whisky Exchange lists an 1875 AE DOR No.3 at £10,000 and an even older 1830 Sazerac de Forge Royal Brandy Cognac would set you back a cool £12,000.

in “clear wines” that are a purer reflection of their vintage, grape variety and terroir. It is by removing all the maskers of taste that it reveals the natural and authentic aromas of the grape. This choice puts finesse ahead of volume and rapidity. For Martell, true luxury is taking the time to do things well.”

To age its cognacs, Martell uses exclusively Tronçaistype fine-grained oak casks, which are characterized by finer, less pronounced tannins in order to respect the richness and delicacy of the clear wines. As a consequence, the aromas that developed are more subtle, more generous and more refined, she says.

The age statement is not permitted on cognac labels and it’s important to know that cognac in the higher categories tend to be aged very much more than the minimum requirements. Nonetheless ageing still plays a very important part in cognac making.

With longer ageing, as well as the choice of crus, cognacs will develop a palette of different aromas.

The best way to introduce cognac to a novice drinker would be to start with an accessible cognac tasting of three different cognacs – Sourice suggests Martell VSOP, Martell Cordon Bleu and Martell XO - leading your guests from the lighter to the more intense tasting cognacs.

30 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

As we went to press stories were brewing of a growing shortage in cognac, owing not least to rising global demand, particularly in the US. If cognac is a drink you wish to offer your guests, now may be a good time to stock up before the price rises to meet the new levels of demand.

Cognac global sales volumes Volume

Market Share

CAGR Volume

CAGR Volume

%Chg Volumes

2016

2016

2011 to 2016

2016 to 2021

2015 to 2016

14,124.7

100%

2.8%

4.0%

8.2%

Americas

41%

8.9%

7.2%

18.5%

Asia Pacific

25%

0.5%

2.5%

6.0%

Europe

17%

-3.1%

-0.6%

-2.1%

Duty Free

11%

0.0%

0.8%

-0.3%

CIS

3%

1.3%

3.4%

1.2%

Africa & Middle East

3%

9.2%

7.3%

4.5%

Region

Units: case volumes ‘000 of 9-litre cases Currency: retail value ‘000s of local currency (variable). Retail prices local currency per bottle.

Source: The IWSR 2017

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cognac

Cognac: origin and production Cognac is a type of brandy. After the distillation and during the aging process, is also called eau de vie. It is produced by doubly distilling white wines produced in any of the designated growing regions.

The drink is named after the French town of Cognac, and is produced in the surrounding wine-growing region in the departments of Charente and CharenteMaritime. Bar staff at inns and in bed & breakfast operations would do well to verse themselves in the fundamentals of the drink, both sales and prices of which are on the rise.

Cognac’s production is classed under the French Appellation d'origine contrôlée, and production methods and the naming of its products must meet certain legal requirements.

Among the specified grapes, the most widely used is Ugni blanc, known locally as Saint-Emilion. The spirit must be twice distilled in copper pot stills and aged for at least two years in French oak barrels from either Limousin or Tronçais.

Cognac matures in barrels in much the same way as whiskies and wines.

The white wine used in making cognac is very dry, acidic and thin. Although it has been characterised as being virtually undrinkable, it is excellent for distillation and aging. It may be made only from a strict list of grape varieties.

In order for it to be considered a true cru, the wine must be at least 90% Ugni blanc (known in Italy as Trebbiano), Folle blanche and Colombard.

After the grapes are pressed, the juice is left to ferment for two to three weeks, until the native yeasts have converted the sugar into alcohol. Neither sugar nor sulphur may be added. At this point, the resulting wine is about 7% to 8% alcohol.

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Distillation takes place in traditionally shaped Charentais copper alembic stills, the design and dimensions of which are also legally controlled. Two distillations must be carried out, and the resulting eau-de-vie is a colourless spirit of about 70% alcohol.

Once distillation is complete, it must be aged in Limousin oak casks for at least two years before it can be sold to the public. It is typically put into casks at an alcohol by volume strength of about 70%. As the cognac interacts with the oak barrel and the air, it evaporates at the rate of about 3% each year, slowly losing both alcohol and water. This phenomenon is referred to locally as La part des anges, or the angels' share. Owing to the fact that alcohol dissipates faster than water, the alcohol concentration drops to about 40%. The cognac is then transferred to large glass carboys called bonbonnes, where it is stored for future blending. Since oak barrels stop contributing to flavour after four or five decades, longer aging periods may not be beneficial.

The age of the cognac is assigned to that of the youngest component used in the blend. The blend is usually of different ages and, in the case of the larger and more commercial producers, from different local areas. This blending of different eaux-de-vie is important to obtain a complexity of flavours absent from an eau-de-vie from a single distillery or vineyard. Each cognac house has a master taster, who is responsible for blending the spirits, so that cognac produced by a particular company will have a consistent house-style and quality.

Cognac may be rumoured to be in short supply but there is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of types of the spirit, providing great scope for animated fireside chats in your bar.

DECEMBER DECEM DE CEMBER CE CEM BE 2017 BER 20177 | INN 20 INN KEEPER KEEEPE EP R | 31 EP

outdoor heating & lighting

2XWGRſU heating OLJKWLQJ

I

&

t’s December and dark by around 4pm. Your outdoor drinkers, boosted in numbers at this time of year by smokers among them who need the comfort of light - and preferably heat - outdoors when they leave their room or the bar for a cigarette.

Outdoor lighting comes in a wide range of materials, styles and of course prices. If you are having new lighting fitted into your outdoor space whether it be for your car park, outdoor seating area or an elegant outdoor wedding reception area, it is important that you get the process of fitting the lighting right first time.

Domestic outdoor light fittings can of course be bought online at very little cost. Urban Cottage Industries sells its round galvanized lighting hook with a bright LED light suitable for indoor or outdoor use for under £10, while Nostalgia Lights’ metal galvanized industrial hook retails for just £5.50. These are something a domestic homeowner may choose, but these would not generally be recommended for a commercial hospitality environment.

Around the £40 are outdoor and garden post lights in a stainless steel finish with polycarbonate white diffuser from Ocean Lighting.

For a commercial operation it is recommended – arguably - that you set your budget per light at least around the £50 mark in order to achieve a robust result that does not compromise your venue or your guests. If you want a premium effect it is of course advisable to double that, according to the providers of the higher-end outdoor lamp providers.

Energy efficiency Gone are the days when you’d switch on your EC-approved energy-saving light bulb and experience the same effect as sitting around a cigarette for minute or two while the bulb gradually emitted enough light into the room to see.

32 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

While CFLs don’t start at full intensity like incandescent bulbs, nearly all CFLs nowadays turn on instantly and reach full illumination very quickly.

Some CFLs are marketed as ‘instant on’ and have no noticeable warm-up period. They used to flicker when they were first switched on in earlier versions with magnetic ballasts. CFLs today use electronic ballasts, which are faster and provide better comfort for guests and employees compared to conventional old magnetic ballasts. A ballast is a device that serves to control the flow of power to a fluorescent lamp.

Advanced electronic ballasts have replaced many magnetic ballasts of the past in new CFL bulbs and fixtures. Electronic ballasts improve fluorescent energy efficiency even further, eliminate the visible flickering found in older fluorescent technology.

Efficient lighting is a high-return, low-risk investment. The typical return on investment ranges from one to three years. Since CFLs last much longer than traditional bulbs, labour costs associated with changing light bulbs are reduced. Note that costs and return on investment may vary greatly depending on the local context and on the hotel’s initial situation.

Although the cost per bulb is a lot higher than incandescent bulbs, an energy saving of up to 80% combined with the fact that the bulbs last several times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs leave it in doubt that an inn is going to benefit from energy saving light bulbs both in the bar and in the guest accommodation.

There is no doubt that the advantages of energy efficient lightbulb are great when it comes to saving money: LED lights save up to 80% on traditional incandescent light bulbs.

Oxfordshire-based Garden Trading supplies outdoor lighting for inns' gardens, porches or outhouses, boasting a range of stylish and weatherproof outdoor lighting.

Garden Trading boasts a large range of outdoor www.innkeepermagazine.co.ukk

outdoor heating & lighting

lighting, predominantly at mid-range prices.

Making time to speak to Innkeeper magazine at the busiest time of the year for the outdoor heating and lighting business, wholesale account manager Nell Milliken says: “Our wall lights are fully motion sensor compatible and IP44 rated. We have something for every outside space.”

She says: “With regards to wired-in outdoor lighting, the particular trend is for hot-dipped galvanized light. They never rust is the beauty of them so they have applications everywhere.

“We seem to have cornered the market in it. We have

lumens chart Requirements for a standard 240V power source Brightness

220+

400+

700+

900+

Standard

25W

40W

60W

75W

100W

Halogen

18W

28W

42W

53W

70W

CFL

6W

9W

12W

15W

20W

LED

4W

6W

10W

13W

18W

Source: Easylighting

www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk www innkeepermagazine co uk

1300+

around 20 designs all in hot-dipped galvanized, and we are expanding that all the time. They are our biggest line and we are selling both to the retailers and to the contract market namely pubs, inns, hotels, restaurants.”

Much of the demand for lighting styles both indoors as well as outdoors is of a utilitarian, warehouse-type look. She says. “We sell a lot of our outdoor lights for use in indoor restaurants. They are all designed for outdoor use.”

Outdoor heating As well as supplying outdoor lighting, Garden Trading sells an impressive range of outdoor heaters, extending as far as fire pits (pictured), which make for great contrast with what is perceived as the safe outdoor heating solution.

However, the biggest evolutionary trend of the outdoor heating has been in highpast year in outd er-quality lamps and equipment, according to Heat managing director Steve Levy.

Outdoors manag His company specialises in designing and manufacturing outdoor heating for the premium end of the market. mark “Whereas we used u to have lamps that were very walk past a pub and everyone would bright – you’d w – we went to low glare now be illuminated orange o we have ultra-low glare (ULG) lamps. It gives out 95% less light but bu the same amount of heat. You can naturally stand in front of the lamp,” he explains.

The company developed its ULG lamps from work that it was carrying out in Asia/Pacific with DECEMBER 2017 | INN KEEPER | 33

outdoor heating & lighting one particular company with which it works veryy closely, and Levy says its development came about ut by complete accident.

“I was in the factory, looking at a lamp, and I asked what it was. They dismissed it as a failed experxperiment. I asked what was wrong and they said various rious aspects were wrong, including its colour.

“Then I noticed it was the same heat, and I suddenly denly realised that we had stumbled on what the market had been seeking for a long time: lower glare products.””

The other breakthrough recently he says has been een in controls in the systems. The company’s new Heat and Beat system for example is a combination off an ultra-low glare heater with an amazing reflector.

“It punches out loads of heat and it has built in speakers so you can stream music to it from your phone, and the whole system is controlled by Bluetooth,” he explains. “You download an app and an innkeeper can up heaters 4 sand 5 and turn down own heaters 1 and 2 all from an iPhone. You can put one on a timer, turn on the music - all that functionality ality comes from the app.”

Another big development in the market place is a reversal back away from a trend towards heaterss getting increasingly slim line. “In doing so they lost a lot of the heat because the reflectors got quite small. mall.

In the past year we have developed a series of heaters aters we call Fat Boy. The heat that comes out of them m is just phenomenal. That is because we have gone right back to basics and developed a heater with a big reflector, and they are selling like hot cakes. They still look quite attractive but instead of prettying them up and making them really slim line this is in fact a big fat heater that chucks out an enormous amount of heat. At the end of the day that is what people want, which is why they are buying into this kind of equipment,” he says.

“If we are heating a large outdoor space we can choose the area we heat. If we are tasked with heating an inn with a big outdoor area, we’d heat the area where the people congregate and only turn the other parts on if we need them. You can’t do that with a conventional heating system – you can’t just heat a quarter of a room for example. The larger they are to heat the more economical it becomes,” he adds.

A decent heater is going to cost upwards of £140, he says, and in many scenarios people may install multiple heaters, often with some sort of controller.

“Pubs, inns and B&Bs used to use what were called a soft start timer/time lag,” he says. “We use something that does the same but electronically. You’ll have a red button outside a bar that a smoker can press when he goes out for a smoke and it is pre-set for, say, 20 minutes. This saves it having to be on for 34 | INN KEEPER | DECEMBER 2017

IP rating – lighting IP..

Solids

Water

0

Non protected

Non protected

1

Protected against a solid object greater than 50mm, such as a hand

Protected against dripping water. Limited liquid entry

2

Protected against a solid object greater than Protected against vertical dripping water 12mm, such as a finger when tilted at 15 degrees.

3

Protected against a solid object greater than Protected against spraying water at an angle 2.5mm, such as a screwdriver of up to 60 degrees. Limited liquid entry.

4

Protected against a solid object greater than Protected against splashing water from all 1mm, such as most screws and wires directions. Limited liquid entry.

5

Dust protected. Prevents ingress of dust sufficient to cause harm

Protected against jets of water from all directions. Limited liquid entry

6

Dust tight. No ingress of dust

Protected against strong jets of water from all directions. Limited liquid entry

that full time. That’s a very popular piece of kit for smaller premises such as bed and breakfasts.”

Among its premium customers, Heat Outdoors provides the heating for Kensington roof gardens, an outdoor space in elegant surroundings of the kind a boutique hotel may have to heat.

Levy adds: “When we first went into the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel we noticed they had quite a big outdoor area if you are looking at it from the front. They decided they want to put outdoor heating so we designed a system for them. They came back to us after a year to say they have found that even if the pub was half full those people would rather be standing outdoors in the heat than inside.

So they went ahead and heated the other side of their outdoor area,” he says.

There are popular misconceptions regarding outdoor heating that are not helpful either to the industry or those who provide the heaters. A decade ago news stories were published reporting environmental groups objecting to the use of outdoor heaters owing to the fact that the heat simply rose to the sky. As the ingenuity of providers such as Whatever your budget, a vast and growing range of exciting heat and lighting alternatives is available for innkeepers to consider. www.innkeepermagazine.co.uk

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