Luxury B&B November Issue

PREMIUM WHISKY HIGH-END WHISKY EXPERTS EXPLAIN HOW TO CHOOSE & SERVE SOME OF THE FINEST DRAMS

CONSTRUCTING A FINE WINE CELLAR

SPECIALISTS OUTLINE THE BEST WAY TO DESIGN, BUILD AND MAINTAIN A STUNNING WINE CELLAR

PLUS! LUXURY BED LINEN Trends in style for relaxation in luxury comfort on the bed

UK’S FIRST

LUXURY

B&B MAGAZINE WWW.LUXURYBBMAG.CO.UK • ISSUE 20 • NOVEMBER 2017

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Welcome

this month...

This is the first full issue of Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine that I have put together. As the new editor, I am very excited to be embarking on my goal, which is to sharpen the focus of the only leading publication dedicated to this high-end hospitality sector. My aim is to ensure it provides you every month with the key news and critical analysis of developing business issues directly relevant to you as a manager or owner of a luxury bed & breakfast or highend boutique hotel.

I am also intent on regularly furnishing your read with highly relevant features of practical use in better running your business or developing your premises and operations within it.

In this issue for example we present you with insight into the cost and practical considerations that luxury B&B managers or owners should consider if they are thinking about creating a wine cellar. Such a structure would safeguard the lifespan of your vintage wines, and if presented well it would also provide a fantastic talking point for visiting guests with an interest in fine wine. The result of the investment would be to encourage discussion of wines and effortlessly move that conversation on to the wealthy customer buying the premium product. Imagine how stunning images of your glass-fronted cellar would look on your website.

As the deep mid-winter approaches we take a look at luxury bed linen. Our Ulster correspondent finds guest habits are driving the evolution of the duvet, and to back up his findings he visits Northern Ireland’s AA award-winning luxury bed and breakfast The Old Inn for an experiential insight into practical use of elegant bedding.

There is much more besides in this my first issue. I am really looking forward to getting to know the business professionals of this elite industry. Please get in touch if you feel there are any issues you would like to be addressed in Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine.

NEWS

4

12

15

20

Analysis and insight of the critical issues confronting luxury bed & breakfast managers

We examine the story behind the emergence of premium spirit, the new market it has delivered, and the associated opportunities it presents to the luxury hospitality sector

31

32

CORE ISSUES

26

Industry news from around the UK

PREMIUM TEQUILA

PRESENTING A FINE WHISKY PORTFOLIO

A number of the leading premium whisky experts talk to the editor about the nuances of the drink at the high end of the market, about which whiskies to choose, and how they should best be served

FINE WINE CELLAR

The discerning guest at a luxury bed & breakfast establishment will appreciate fine or rare wine. We examine the design, build environment and engineering process behind the creation and maintenance of an elegant and functional wine cellar

Stained glasses can be the bane of a bar manager’s life, especially in a luxury environment. We look at the causes of the problem and the techniques you can employ to prevent a tarnished glass

A CLEAN GLASS EVERY TIME

LUXURY BED LINEN FOR A WARMER WINTER

Our Northern Ireland correspondent Francis Higney discovers trends in both luxury duvets and in guest habits driving these trends

Editor

EDITOR

PUBLISHING DIRECTOR

Bill Lumley bill.lumley@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852 345

Helen Richmond helen.richmond@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852 344

Luxury Bed & Breakfast is available on subscription.

UK & Ireland £65; Overseas £98.

SALES MANAGER

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Dywayne Ramsundar dywayne.ramsundar@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852 342

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Printed by Stephens & George Ltd

DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Stuart West stuart.west@jld-media.co.uk 01737 852 343

No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the publishers. The Publishers accept no responsibility for any statements made in signed contributions or in those reproduced from other sources, nor for claims made in any advertisements.

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 3 - November 2017

Luxury Bed & Breakfast is published monthly.

Luxury Bed & Breakfast JLD Media, 25 Clarendon Road, Redhill, Surrey RH1 1QZ Tel: +44 (0) 1737 852 100 www.luxurybbmag.co.uk All rights reserved © JLD Media 2017

- News -

Bed & Breakfast Association launches industry sector’s inaugural summit

Bed & breakfasts score 8% higher than hotels on Trip Advisor TripAdvisor has revealed UK Bed & Breakfast accommodation is rated 8% higher than hotels in the latest analysis of all its guest reviews of operations in the UK residential hospitality market.

The average score for guest satisfaction across the board for all B&Bs overall in the UK was 4.5 out of 5, which is equivalent to a score of 89%, while the average score for all hotels across the board in the UK was found to be 8% lower, at an average score of 4.05, equivalent to 81%.

That tells us that overall millions of users are rating B&Bs 8% higher for guest satisfaction than they rate hotels.

Unveiling the findings at the inaugural Bed & Breakfast Summit, Bed & Breakfast Association chairman David Weston said the results must be due in part to the fact that guests like bed & breakfasts’ authenticity, the personal welcome, the home-cooked breakfast of the smaller size of the B&Bs. “Whatever the reasons, this is a very significant result that is worth celebrating,” he stressed.

Addressing the first Bed & Breakfast seminar Tourism minister John Glen said: “There has been a change in the appetites, tastes and preferences of many people in terms of how they holiday, getting fed up with traditional forms of accommodation in some cases, and that provides new opportunities for B&Bs, and that is reflected in the Trip Advisor guest satisfaction figures."

Bed & Breakfast Association chairman David Weston opened the first ever B&B Summit at Southwark Cathedral last month, held to celebrate the British B&B and the small independent owner-managed independent sector of tourism.

The event was held in a packed hall at Southwark Cathedral, where delegates included bed & breakfast owners, managers, local bed & breakfast associations and press from the UK and China.

Weston said: “The industry comprises 25,000 small businesses, and guests chose to spend 50m nights a year in British B&Bs in the last year, with Visit Britain figures showing domestically 5.31m trips were made to UK B&Bs, amounting to direct turnover of over £2bn. So B&Bs support the economy in rural and coastal areas and very much fit the government’s strategy of trying to encourage tourism to move outside London and the Southeast and to benefit all parts of Britain.”

It is often forgotten that more livelihoods are sustained per guest room at B&Bs than inns or hotels, so they play a very important role in helping rural livelihoods, he said.

“News has spread of the fine quality of UK B&B offer, and the association was proud to be invited this summer to the first ever international Bed & Breakfast Conference in Shanghai, where we were honoured to speak about British B&Bs, the story behind their success and their history.

“In China they are very keen on growing their own domestic B&B prod-

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 4 - November 2017

uct, which differs from ours, but they are using some of the same elements as us. And of course we are encouraging even more Chinese visitors to come over to the UK and stay in our B&Bs, and we are keen to develop the relationship between China and the UK. We are very pleased that a delegate from the Chinese event is here today, a reporter from the Shanghai Morning Post, which was a sponsor of the Chinese event.”

Questions raised by delegates at the summit resulted in a series of heated but positive debates, with a panel of speakers including event sponsor eviivo chief marketing officer Tom Messett, VisitEngland head of business support Ross Calladine, and TripAdvisor industry outreach director Stephanie Boyle.

Also on the panel were Llansteffan Mansion House co-owner David Beaney and Ambleside’s Nanny Brow owner Susan Robinson.

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- News -

Heineken introduces world’s first portable draught beer dispenser

1922 Committee announces support for British gin with its own release

Boutique hotels and luxury bed and breakfast businesses with a confined bar space are to be able to offer draught beer following the launch by Heineken of its new system, a lightweight counter-top dispense system.

Blade is a cutting-edge draught beer system with the footprint of an A4 piece of paper. The unit, which sells at £499 plus VAT, requires zero maintenance, according to Heineken, and means draught beer can be sold on premises that do not have space for a cellar.

Heineken commercial director, Blade UK, Ross Mair said: “Think about what baristas do for coffee, or what mixologists to for cocktails. This system means that the ritual of pouring and presenting a consumer with a great-tasting, freshly poured draught beer, is incredibly powerful.”

Draught beer outsells packaged beer three-

Graham Brady MP, Chairman of the Parliamentary group Conservative Private Members’ Committee, or the 1922 Committee, has outlined the group’s plans to play a part in the British Gin boom, with a soon-to-be crafted ‘1922 Gin’.

The announcement was made last month at the Wine and Spirit Trade Association’s (WSTA) ‘Gin and Tories’ fringe event, hosted in association with the City of London Distillery and Berry Bros & Rudd. It came as Conservative MPs were urged to champion Britain’s gin industry.

Backbench Tory MPs will visit the City of London Distillery to choose their own blend from a wide variety of botanicals to make the gin in advance of the 1922 Committee’s 100-year anniversary in five years – even though, perversely, the committee was actually formed in 1923 City of London Distillery brought gin distilling back to the City in 2012 after an absence of nearly 200 years, and its gin this year won the Double-Gold and Gold Awards at the prestigious San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

At the event Brady called on the Government to support the award-winning British gin industry by freeing its numerous SMEs to grow, create jobs and export.

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 6 - November 2017

to-one, and the new device will help retailers streamline and simplify their operations, he told Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine.

“Blade will add value to this type of business by delivering a brand new and exciting premium experience. It really is set to change the rules for draught beer, turning any counter top into a bar,” he said.

The compact and lightweight machines can easily be set up on a counter top near a power source. “The unit just needs to be fitted with a pre-chilled keg, plugged in, switched on and pressurised before pouring the perfect pint served at 2°C – it’s that simple,” he said.

He stressed there are no maintenance or installation costs. “It takes less than a minute to set up, and changing the keg is really simple and anyone can do it. Plus there is no need to clean lines: it’s simply fresh beer cooled to 2°C, and the beer stays fresh for thirty days.”

- News -

Christmas cocktail A South Devon premium gin distillery has announced it is to market a Christmas cocktail for the first time this year.

Salcombe Distilling co-founder and director Angus Lugsdin told Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine: “We produce all the Salcombe Gin ourselves in our 450-litre Arnold Holstein copper still, producing around 600 bottles a day that are a handfilled, hand-labelled, ultra-premium craft luxury product.

“It’s a classic, citrus-led dry London dry gin using three fresh super-stills for distillation with Macedonian black juniper and English coriander seed, resulting in a lovely lemon morning brightness,” he said.

“It’s smooth enough to drink neat on its own, it’s 44% and makes an amazing gin and tonic, a stunning martini, and we produce a range of cocktails. This Christmas we are producing something called The Christmas jingle, working with Luscombe Drinks just up the road in Buckfastleigh using their cranberry crush and their hot ginger beer. That’s shaken with fresh cranberries, a little bit of lemon juice and salt and gin. It’s absolutely perfect for the festive cocktail,” he claimed.

Salcombe Gin is distributed nationally to boutique hotels, bars, restaurants and inns from the South coast of England to the far West of Scotland.

Sharp rise in butter cost hurts luxury hospitality Luxury bed and breakfast operations and boutique hotels face a tough winter with higher commodity prices, according to the Autumn/Winter 2017 edition of the market forecast for the hospitality and catering industry, Lynx Purchasing Market Forecast.

Lynx Purchasing business development director Matt Thomkins told Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine: “Butter is the real nightmare product for luxury bed & breakfasts at the moment. The cost of the raw material to produce it – the high-fat dairy – has gone up four times since this time last year. We are seeing prices in the marketplace as high as £100-£110 a case, substantially up on the price it was this time last year.

“This is the big product that bed and breakfast businesses will but be using an awful lot of it for baking, for spreading, for breakfast, which is really eating into their margins.”

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 8 - November 2017

Meanwhile according to the report, currency continues to have an impact on purchasing for the hospitality sector. Thomkins says: “The pound is 20% down since last year and as we move into winter we are buying more and more from the continent. That’s always going to have an upward pressure on salad lines and things we are reliant on from the continent through the winter.”

The report also warns of a tough start to 2018. “After a year of inflation, the impact of rising prices on costs is something that doesn’t need spelling out to operators.

However, what’s more of a concern is that many of the operators we speak to aren’t giving enough thought to the challenges of the first few months of 2018 despite very clear evidence that inflationary pressure is going to continue,” the Autumn/Winter report concludes.

- News -

Hotel online business growth specialist wins top Google award

Mobile marketing growth will boost UK hospitality sector A newly published report reveals the hospitality sector is set to benefit from advances in mobile marketing as the number of active mobile phones in circulation tops 80m for the first time. According to the report entitled The State of SMS, the UK hospitality sector will see a 29% increase in customers opting to receive text messages from their preferred brands by the end of 2020, presenting significant business opportunities.

The White Paper was commissioned by UK SMS platform Textlocal and illustrates that 37.2m consumers have already opted to receive SMS and mobile communications from businesses. Within the hospitality sector more than 10.3m customers have opted in to receive texts on reservations, promotions or offers with this figure expected to rise to 13.2m by 2020.

The opportunity is reinforced by figures

own a mobile phone. Despite these findings, only 50% of businesses surveyed are currently using SMS as part of their marketing strategies, although that is expected to grow to 92% by 2018.

The number of businesses texting their customers directly is increasing steadily and becoming more mainstream, with some of the most common reasons being delivery updates (67%), order confirmations (64%) and personalised vouchers or offers (49%). This trend is expected to grow in the hospitality sector, says the report.

Jason Palgrave-Jones, managing director of Textlocal, said: “Mobiles have transformed the way we work, rest and play and are now set to change the way businesses interact with their customers. It’s clear from the report that there are significant opportunities available for restaurants, bars and clubs to make the most

from regulator Ofcom, which estimate that a staggering 93% of the UK’s population now

of mobile technologies as their customers are increasingly opting to hear more from them.”

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 9 - November 2017

A Norwich-based marketing agency for independent hotels has won Google’s global award for growing businesses online.

Direct Hotel Marketing (DHM) helps independent hotels obtain more direct business. It was founded by experienced hotel director CEO Adam Hamadache, and last year the business partnered with marketing agency The Fountain Partnership, which is also based in Norwich.

“Our goal is to help independent hoteliers achieve higher percentages of direct bookings. This will allow these hoteliers to pay less commission to booking agents,” Hamadache told Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine. “Obviously the aim of most boutique hotels is to achieve more direct bookings by cutting out agency fees.”

He is associate director of the luxury Cranleigh Boutique Hotel in the Lake District, which was the winner of the 2014 Trip Advisor Travellers’ Choice No.1 for Romance in the North. Since partnering with DHM the hotel has reached 96% direct bookings, according to Hamadache.

The boutique hotel, a two minute walk from Bowness on Lake Windermere, is rated five stars on TripAdvisor.

- News -

Independent Hotel Show Awards announced The winners of the Independent Hotel Show Awards were announced at last month’s Independent Hotel Show, Olympia.

The award for Independent Hotelier was presented to Paul Baylis who took over early this year as general manager of the Carden Park Hotel in Cheshire.

Baylis said: "Well done to all the nominees, I am elated to win this award. This really is a nice surprise, and a big one as I've only been in the hotel industry for nine years.

“Carden Park is a big hotel, so to win at the independent hotel show awards is even more special. We will continue to do what we do, which is host the biggest and best conference events for blue chip companies, in the UK. We also have a special announcement coming up, so it's an exciting time for Carden Park.”

The award for outstanding new hotel of the year was presented to No.15 Great Pulteney. Managing director Jonathan Walker said: "Thank you, on behalf of everyone at No. 15 Great Pulteney, we are truly delighted to win the outstanding new hotel award - this is the one we wanted to win! After a number of years working at corporate IHG hotels, it was great to go back to being a hotel keeper with the opportunity at No. 15.”

Augill Castle grabs Good Hotel Guide award for family friendly offering Kirkby Stephen’s quintessentially eccentric Augill Castle has picked up A revered industry award after having an Editor’s Choice Family Hotel Award bestowed upon it by the Good Hotel Guide.

This isn’t the first time the team at Augill have tasted Good Hotel Guide success: last year the luxury premises picked up its coveted César Award, which is named after celebrated Swiss hotelier César Ritz. The awards are given to the guide’s ten best hoteliers.

Augill Castle has also previously picked up Good Hotel Guide Awards for both its fantastic wedding and family offerings, as well as its impressive commitment to green hospitality.

Following the award Simon and Wendy Bennett, who run Augill Castle, have been invited to the Good Hotel Guide’s prestigious Editor’s Choice 2018 awards ceremony, which was hosted at the Independent Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 10 - November 2017

Hotel Show at The Olympia in London on the 17 October.

Simon Bennett said: “We were thrilled to feature in the Good Hotel Guide again this year. To be the recipient of an Editor’s Choice award is fantastic and we’re all so pleased that Augill has once again been recognised for our unique family offering.”

Augill Castle is a spectacular 15-bedroom castle hotel nestled on the border of Cumbria and Yorkshire. Furnished with an eclectic mix of contemporary and antique furniture, the relaxed residence specialises in a combination of lavish social dining and legendary dinner parties. It is also home to the Great British Bar, serving exclusively British-made beers, wines and spirits.

The Good Hotel Guide is the leading independent hotel guide to hotels in Great Britain and Ireland.

- News -

UK’s punitive wine and spirit duty rates are turn-off for trade The Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA) is calling for the Chancellor to freeze wine and spirit duty in the Budget on 22 November, both to help support the British hospitality sector and to bolster Brexit trade deal opportunities.

Phillip Hammond is expected to increase duty by another projected inflationary rise of 3.4%, in the second punishment Budget of the year, as the Government moves its main fiscal event from spring to autumn. The move is expected to hit bars in luxury bed & breakfast businesses across the UK. In March this year the Chancellor raised all alcohol duties by a hefty 3.9%, adding 8p to the average-priced bottle of wine and 30p on a bottle of spirits.

The WSTA is warning that there will be little to celebrate this festive season with duty set to go up again, a month before Christmas, adding another 7p on a bottle of wine and 26p for spirits.

Ade McKeon, General Manager UKIR of Accolade Wines, a global importer and exporter and the UK’s biggest wine company, said: “We want government to take a reasonable approach to excise and not impose a second excise duty increase this year. Since the referendum, Accolade Wines has had to face a combination of serious challenges in the UK. As an international wine company we have to consider our investment decisions carefully. We are hoping to see the Chancellor, our local MP, send us a positive message on 22 November by freezing alcohol duty.”

Accolade Wine’s head quarters are located in Weybridge in Surrey and owns the largest wine production site in Europe, based in Bristol.

The last time the UK experienced a double hit on alcohol duty increases was during the financial crisis of 2008.

The WSTA is calling on members to lobby MP’s to highlight the UK’s grossly unfair alcohol taxation policy that is leaving everyone out of pocket.

Duty is so high that 56% of the average bottle of wine in shops and supermarkets is

now taken by the Treasury in tax and VAT and an eye-watering 76% of a bottle of spirits.

The UK alcohol industry is one of the most heavily taxed in Europe, with British drinkers paying an extraordinary 68% of all wine duties collected by all 28 EU member states and 27% of all spirits duties. This is by far the most of any member state despite accounting for only 11% of the total EU population.

WSTA chief executive Miles Beale said: “We are hearing very mixed messages from government. On the one hand Liam Fox is championing the importance of imports to the UK. "At the same time Philip Hammond is revving up to hit us with a second inflation-busting hike in seven months in alcohol duty – making the UK less attractive to importers.

"Don’t be fooled into thinking that when the Chancellor announces 'no change' to alcohol duty plans that he is doing everyone a favour. No change means that

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 11 - November 2017

duty on all alcohol will rise in line with RPI inflation, which in March meant a rise of 3.9%. Next month we are set to see yet another 3.4% added to the staggering amount British consumers already pay in wine and spirit duty.

“Whether it’s English Vineyards, new start-up distilleries, producers, distributors or retailers, there are hundreds of British businesses that will be hit hard by another such increase.

“This is why we are calling on our members to contact their MPs and ask the Chancellor to end these unpopular duty rises and support our great British wine and spirits industry. By freezing duty the Government can support British businesses and consumers and even help to increase revenue to the Exchequer.”

The association suggests tax levies can be counter-productive: “When spirits duty was frozen in 2016, revenues actually increased by 7% the following year.”

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- Core Issues / Insight -

A fair playing field Rules and regulations in the hospitality sector have built up over many years.

Most were designed for larger organisations, and the legislators at the time often had hotels in mind when they framed them. Swathes of regulation and legislation date back many years without being changed, yet they affect small and often luxury B&Bs. One of the problems of our sector is that we are classified by different government agencies in different ways. Sometimes we pay ordinary domestic rates, sometimes we pay business rates, and we are caught in different ways by various pieces of legislation that can be extremely burdensome for B&Bs. There are understood to be 140 rules and regulations with which proprietors have to comply if they wish to offer accommodation and meals.

There are also many regulations still on the statute book that really ought not to be enforced. For example, you have to keep for no less than six years every guest’s names and address and the next place they are going to go to and their passport number if they are not a UK national. When this came up for review a few years ago the police objected to it due to terrorism and crime, so it is still there.

This and other onerous rules are not enforced on peer to peer accommodation but we still have to comply with them.

B&B Association chairman David Weston told the inaugural B&B seminar: “For the use of TV you have four different organisations including BBC licensing that you may have to respond to if you just want to have a radio or TV in your guests’ bedroom, partly because of the labyrinthine nature of copyright law. Most of these laws have very

good reasons to be there and we are not objecting to them in that sense, but they can be very difficult for very small businesses to cope with.

“I’m looking forward to this being addressed. Although I know there are a lot of things on the plate of government over the next year or two, these things are burdens for very small businesses like luxury bed & breakfasts.”

He singles out the EU as a threat, in particular its Package Holidays Directive. “You may wish to attract visitors with the offer of a round of golf – exactly the sort of thing we should be doing, adding value, increasing turnover and encouraging people to come and stay. Unfortunately the Packaged Holiday Directive rules that if you combine a number of different elements to the visitor’s stay, you create a package. If you do this, you then have to buy a bond as if you are a tour operator, or put all your money in an escrow account so you get no cash flow and it is all held by lawyers till the customer has left.”

And he says: “That law is followed more by the breach than the observance to be honest, but it nevertheless is preventing people adding value to their products. It would be good if we could use the leeway we might get on Brexit to interpret a packaged holidays directive a little bit differently, and say such a package holiday must include travel.

If we did that we’d be alright adding value to our products.”

At this point the tourism minister, having to leave the B&B seminar for a three-line whip, called out: “I heard all that!” This at least indicates the concerns of luxury B&B owners are being taken seriously by the UK government.

Among the regulations the association has been fighting, or fighting against the

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 12 - November 2017

way they have been interpreted, is the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) order 2005.

Weston explained: “This means we have to comply with fire regulations that are interpreted quite differently by fire authorities, and there are over 40 of them. It means some B&Bs are told to fit fire doors or sprinklers, which can be very expensive and disproportionate for small premises.”

One of the reasons the B&B Association was formed in 2005 was because the law changed to apply to everyone; before that you had to have a certain number of rooms, he said.

“We had to get fire authorities to understand that these are tiny businesses and they can’t be heavy-handed and have to take appropriate approach, which has started to happen and has improved a lot over the last 10 years,” he said.

The next big area his association has been trying to address is the lack of any level playing field between B&Bs and people letting their property through peer to peer websites like Airbnb. “It is not that we object to competition because we are all competing all the time with everything from budget hotels to sales catering, but competition is fine only as long as it is on a level playing field,” he said.

Effectively a B&B is required to comply with all rules including costly fire regulation, while exactly the same type of premises next door, with the same risk factors, is not currently visited by any regulator. “The fire regulator won’t knock on their door, so nobody is checking whether they have any fire precautions or not. So one of the things we have been saying to government is that these things should all be consistent and we should all be on a level playing field,” said Weston.

- Core Issues / Insight -

It is not the operators using Airbnb who are at fault but the regulators, who need to follow through, he said. “We’re not anti-Airbnb, which is a brilliant and fantastically designed website and a brilliant marketing machine, and we welcome competition. It is the owner of the property who is responsible for complying with the regulations. I personally do not think the authorities do enough to explain what the regulations are. Instead they simply say the business owners are responsible for complying with them.”

Although the situation has improved recently, owing in no small part to the pressure exerted by the B&B Association, West-

on lays the blame firmly with the regulators.

“They are checking that we as B&Bs are complying with the regulations, but they are not currently checking that people are complying on other platforms, which is simply not fair.”

A number of B&Bs have complained to the association that they have even offered to the regulator to provide the details of Airbnb premises that may not be complying with various regulations but are dismissed by the regulator who says they do not have the time. Weston said: “We have been told that by a number of regulators and government officials that they only come across Airbnb properties if a member of the public

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 13 - November 2017

complains specifically about a fire risk which is quite unlikely – most members of the public don’t complain about fire risks – or there is an actual fire, and in such an event do an audit.

“Well it’s a bit late for that if there is a fire, but that really is what they have told us. It is interesting that when B&Bs have offered to provide names and addresses of premises they should be checking for hazards they have effectively declined the assistance, which they shouldn’t do – it’s meant to be a risk-based system: they are meant to look at the actual risks regardless of the business time, and just inspect everybody on the same basis," he concludes.

- Core Issues / Insight -

Dealing with online travel agents – OTAs Online travel agents are a great boon to our industry in many ways, not least because they have brought in large quantities of business to bed and breakfast operations across the UK. Many B&B owners get a very high proportion of their turnover through online booking companies. They have transformed our marketing in many ways which is a very good thing.

However, the issues are that a number of these OTAs are giant companies, with the two biggest having over 80% market share between them. Priceline and Expedia are multi-billion dollar corporations.

The difference in size between those companies and the small B&B is that there is no negotiation regarding the terms of business.

It’s simply, “These are our T&Cs”, and if you raise an objection it is ignored: you sign it or you don’t.

The fact is that they know that, and they know how powerful they are becoming, particularly those two big groups between them, and therefore they are in a position to dictate terms and conditions. As the association is trying to get regulators to understand, this situation can put pressure on such things as cancellation terms.

These effectively mean that more and more guests will not expect to pay anything when they cancel, and they thus reduce a business’ cash flow. There are other concerns too, such as a delay in getting paid by the OTA and issues such as card payments and how they are handled. In a way it is just taking control away from your business and giving it to a global corporation.

The B&B Association has been trying to push back a little on behalf of its members, not because it is anti-OTAs because they are great for bringing in business but it is just the way they do certain things where it thinks they have gone a bit too far.

For example, there are issues like so-

called rate parity, whereby an OTA may tell you that you can’t charge a lower rate to your own customer on your own website.

The B&B Association does not think they should be able to do that. It has been banned in France and Germany and the association is pushing for it to be banned in the UK. Showing false discounts is another issue the industry has with OTAs. Association chairman David Weston says: “You will all be familiar with this: it says for example £246 which is crossed out and beneath it the price £185 and the words 25% discount.

The consumer looking at that is going to think, 'Brilliant I am going to book through this amazing discount portal because it’s obviously cheaper.'

“All the surveys on why people book through OTAs suggest the top reason is they think it is cheaper than booking direct. Well these are the sort of reasons just why they think that. The fact is as all B&Bs probably know only too well, the price has only ever been £185 and never was £246: there is no discount at all; this is just the price,” he says.

What the OTA has done, and what it will say in the small print, is to compare one date with another, and rule that a Sunday night in January is going to be the same price as Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve. The customer is led to believe he is getting a 25% discount through booking through that site when he patently is not: he is just paying the normal price.

Weston says: “In any other retail area this deception would simply not be allowed, and in my opinion it is illegal.”

This deception discourages people from booking direct with you, when what you would ideally want to have is more direct bookings.

They also dominate the search engines by insisting you must be able to bid under your own name, so when the client types in the name of your B&B the top link he thinks

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 14 - November 2017

is you, but in fact it is an OTA taking 15-18% commission – or sometimes even more.

One of the delegates at the B&B Seminar contended that she had found 20 websites, many of which were booking.com masquerading as other sites that invite you to donate to keep the site going – “a very handmade looking site for spurious websites I’ve never heard of,” she said.

Such sites dominate findings in a Google search. They have deliberately created many brands so the customer gets the impression there is lots of choice when in fact a lot of them are just the same two companies.

Asking for funding to keep them going is ridiculous when Priceline alone pays Google something like £2.6bn a year. “They don’t really need anyone to put their hands in their pockets – they’ve got quite enough money, says Weston.

He concludes: “We are not anti-OTAs at all, and a lot of our members relay on them and they are a very good force for marketing an bookings in our industry. But some of these bad practices and anti-competitive things are just not good for small businesses."

- Core Issues / Insight -

Bed & Breakfast Day Tom Messett, chief marketing officer at Eviivo, sponsor of the inaugural national B&B Day on 24 July 2018, explains the rationale behind the event, and the importance of both luxury and budget bed & breakfast operations registering to make it happen.

The organisers of the first ever B&B Day next year are seriously looking for creative ideas as to how to make the occasion work to the benefit of the entire B&B sector.

“Statistics show how important B&Bs are to the economy, and to tourism in general,” he says. “Think of the most romantic hotel in the UK or Europe. It’s not the Savoy or the Ritz, or any other five-star hotel in the City.

It’s not even a country house hotel. In fact It’s a B&B. They are voted number one by TripAdvisor, which also happens to be one of our customers.

“That’s the point behind B&B Day: some of your properties are among the best properties around, full-stop. The value for money that you get in a B&B is second-to-none.”

Judges at hospitality industry awards often say how surprised they are by the quality of what’s on offer at bed & breakfast venues, he says.

“We need to shout about that more and we need to grow the industry and grow the awareness that a B&B is cool: it’s a great place to stay, and a great alternative. That’s why we want to launch B&B day.”

A number of bodies are looking to working together to launch the annual B&B Day:

tourist associations, Visit Britain, and the B&B Association. “We will sit behind and help power the initiative,” he promises. Speaking directly to B&Bs, he said: “This is for you – this isn’t about us. It is about the sector and growing it.

If you win, we all win.”

So how do you get involved, and what is the day all about?

The first thing to do is look at bandbday.com, where you can register to participate. If you are a tourist association, share this with your neighbours. Register.

This is how we can start getting you involved. At this stage it is just about getting you registered and getting your interest.

"Think about the day, which will be 24 March. We picked that day because it is not peak season. We don’t want to deliver you a load of bookings in the middle of your peak season when you are already busy. We want the season to start early, and to make that happen we want people to start thinking about their summer holiday, to start thinking in March about where they are going to stay, and to think, “You know what – I’m going to stay in a B&B.” He says Eviivo is going to start to support this in a number of different ways. "We also want to get as many associations involved as possible. We want your help, we want your members involved, we want your ideas and your creative input.

This is still a number of months away, so get in touch: we really want your help.

"What do we have planned?

First we have a number of PR agencies that work with Eviivo

and we are going to do a number of big, eye-catching things, all of them about highlighting the best of British B&Bs. So when you are registering, tell us the stories you have to tell.

Maybe it is about the property itself, for instance that you are in a converted castle or somewhere that used to be owned by somebody famous. Maybe you have a ghost. There are apparently 12 haunted B&Bs in the UK. Maybe it is something about yourself and how you first got into the industry. There are some amazing B&B stories of a type that you’d never hear about Premier Inn. "Please, tell us your stories, for that is what we can form as the core of our PR for the industry, both individually and collectively."

The second area is digital marketing. "We are going to use our technology to create a bookable page for B&B Day, which will obviously be commission free. The idea is we really want people to actually book a stay in a B&B for this day – for the weekend of 24 March.

"So, I want you to think of what kind of special offers you could provide for this day. Maybe if you book for this night you will get a free breakfast, or a second night free, or a discount on your standard rate. Maybe it is something completely different like you’ll offer painting courses or guided walks. It could be any number of different things, but let’s find something unique that you can offer these guests to stay in a B&B that really reflects who you are, and to get them to make that booking. We want

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 15 - November 2017

your premises booked to capacity on 24 March.

"Of course we also want regular guests to know about the day. We will be providing to those who register stickers, logos – all kinds of promotional material like the old TripAdvisor stickers you used to get – to put in your window, to show your guest, to put on your website so that you too can really promote this B&B Day. The plan is for it to become an annual event. It will evolve and it will improve and get bigger and better. But it will only do so if you will help us. We will provide as much support as we can but this is about you."

From a timings perspective, the event was first announced on 18 October. You need you to be registering by the end of December, giving organisers around three months to plan their activity, to get things in motion and to give them time to make things happen.

"The event is going to happen wherever there is a B&B. We are looking in particular at places where there are concentrations of B&Bs just as the Lake District, but this is going to be a national initiative. We want everyone involved, and digitally too," he said.

"We will make sure the stories are told online, via the press, such as the MailOnline where we have been very successful getting coverage of such events in the past."

Other countries have already done similar things quite successfully, he says.

"We want this to become an annual fixture in the calendar of the B&B owner that people look forward to," Messett concludes.

- In Depth / Premium Tequila -

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 16 - November 2017

- In Depth / Premium Tequila -

A growing taste for luxury

Premium tequila is increasingly becoming a regular ingredient in cocktails. Premium bed & breakfast bars as well as and bars in luxury boutique hotels are becoming motivated to experiment with tequila in cocktails, as they are interested in the way the spirit can enhance the flavour of the drinks. Bill Lumley looks at the emergence of the premium spirit and with it a new market surported by both sexes and all ages.

F

or decades the main perception of tequila was of a spirit knocked back by the intoxicated drinker at the end of a heavy drinking session, in short measures, and as quickly as possible, followed immediately by sucking on a lime with salt.

With premium tequila, which has been emerging onto the shelves of higher-end bars worldwide over the past couple of decades, the true story could not be more different.

Over the past two decades a growing number of brands have been producing premium tequila, among them Alma Mia Blanco, Aqauvira Premium Reposado, Arette Gran Clase, Casa Noble tequila Anejo and Casa Viejo Reposado.

It was back in 1989 that Patrón introduced the world to ultra-premium tequila. The spirit was the brainchild of two entrepreneurs, John Paul DeJoria and Martin Crowley, whose love of tequila and desire to create the best tequila

in the world led them to the Highlands of Jalisco, Mexico. There they found tequila industry veteran Francisco Alcaraz and asked him to produce the most extraordinary, highest quality tequila possible.

Greg Cohen is marketing director for Patrón, which is Spanish for “the good boss”.

He tells Luxury B&B magazine that the first thing to recognise with tequila is that there is a marked difference between a high quality tequila and a ‘mixto’.

“Under Mexican law, in order to be allowed to be referred to as tequila, the drink must firstly be produced in Mexico, and secondly it must be made from at least 51% agave, a genus of monocots native to the hot and arid regions of Mexico and the Southwestern United States.

“The higher-end tequilas - the ultra-premium tequilas - are made from 100% agave. The result is a very pure, well-made tequila that Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 17 - November 2017

gives rise to a vastly different drinking experience, whether consumed neat or mixed in a cocktail, as compared to using a 51% agave, or a mixto, tequila,” he says.

By using 100% agave in the distillation process it means that no other sugar is used during fermentation to create the alcohol.

This means the end product has more body, more flavour, and a stronger agave aroma.

In fact 100% agave can turn a strong blanco tequila into a respectable drink, with a peppery bite and a powerful agave-sharp tang.

The mixto tequilas tend to be a lot less expensive, Cohen says. “They are certainly of a lower quality and at the same time more readily available, drunk quickly and followed straight away with salt, lime and a grimace.”

By contrast mixto tequilas are very different spirits to a premium or luxury tequila, he explains. “It’s very easy to spot whether it is a 51% or a 100% tequila because by law it also has to

- In Depth / Premium Tequila -

state the percentage on the bottle’s label.”

He stresses: “I would urge anyone who is interested in tequila to seek out the 100% agave brands. They are just two different categories of spirit. It’s all called tequila, but not all tequilas are equal.”

Cohen contends Patrón is probably the most well-known of all the 100% agave tequilas.

“Patrón’s standard is fervently maintained by the brand’s master distiller, Francisco Alcaraz. He and his highly talented production team create every drop of Patrón at our distillery in Mexico. One of Francisco’s strong beliefs identified early on that has been maintained as we have grown into a worldwide brand is that his philosophy in expansion was not just to build bigger ovens and bigger fermentation tanks and bigger pot stills.

“That may be how some choose to do it, but he has always been adamant that in order to

maintain the quality and consistency and to ensure that the product never changes. So he replicated or cloned the process: we have a small oven, a small fermentation, small distillation unit. He uses exactly the same size and process. We now have a large distillery but it is really made up of lots of small distilleries that ensure the consistently high quality spirit.

By replicating the process, not by expanding or changing the recipe, the bottle you drink today is exactly like the one you’d have drunk the day we started.”

PROFILE OF TEQUILA DRINKER “We are fortunate to have a product that appeals to so many different types of people, appealing appeals to every kind of man or woman across all demographics and all walks of life,” he tells Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine. “We’re not just a tequila brand for one subset of people.”

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 18 - November 2017

As tequila has broadened in consumer appeal, Patrón itself has produced a growing number of varieties of the spirit for a wide variety of consumer tastes including a fondness for aged spirits, with whisky aficionados broadening their tastes to include it, and therefore lending itself to a bar tender in a luxury bed & breakfast bar, says Cohen.

Premium tequila’s appeal has widened broadly in the past decade as innovative versions of the drink have become best-sellers such as Patrón’s XO Café. The 35% abv coffee liqueur is a blend of Patron silver tequila and the pure, natural flavour of fine coffee. It is a dark, rich, brown drink with an aroma of coffee, chocolate and vanilla, with a smooth yet dry finish and a taste of fresh roasted coffee with notes of coffee and light tequila.

The launch of the brand’s XO Café dark Cocoa a few years ago brought further appeal

- In Depth / Premium Tequila -

of the spirit to a wider female audience.

Cohen says: “I truly believe tequila appeals to people across the board. In a boutique hotel, luxury bed & breakfast or similar environment, you will have guests that know and enjoy the brand, are happy to see it on the shelf in the bar, and will order it. Secondly, for such a property that wants to offer its guests something unique - as most want to do – they can create a cocktail with Patrón and present an old-fashioned cocktail, but one made with Patrón Anejo, or a mojito made with tequila instead of rum.

“Instead of a gin and tonic they can even serve a Patrón & tonic, which we call a Patrónic, a delicious cocktail easy to make.

You can surprise and delight guests if you have something like that on the cocktail menu.

There is a way to broaden the product’s appeal by suggesting those kinds of cocktails with premium tequila such as Patrón, and at the same time creating something memorable for consumers visiting the property.

“There are simple cocktails, but if you have a bar manager that likes to experiment and put together different flavours it is remarkable what you can come up with,” he says.

At a drinks conference in October in Berlin, he says, he encountered bar staff who were making incredible cocktails using tequila that he had never imagined possible.

“A lot of upmarket accommodation boutique hotels especially employ this type of professional, talented bar staff, and they and their guests can really have a lot of fun with it.

“Tequila is such a very versatile spirit. Truly almost anything you can make with vodka, gin or rum you can make with tequila, and it adds a new and unexpected but pleasant taste,” he says.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY Environmental responsibility is taken seriously by tequila producers in Mexico. Cohen says: “Something we have seen from a lot of our customers and bar tenders is an increasing interest in sustainability and knowing about the environmental practices and sustainable practices of the products they support.

“In the tequila industry we have always been a leader in protecting the environment, putting in place processes to ensure that we are controlling the environmental impact of tequila production. From the perspective of the barman of a small hotel it is a great conversation point. We have put in place several

practices and we have been recognised by the Mexican government for introducing such practices that limit environmental impact.”

He stresses: “We do it not for the publicity but because it is the right thing to do. And while we do not give away to our competitors secrets about how we make our tequilas, we do share with them information on what we do to help the environment and often invite them to come and see what we are doing in this regard and discuss among the industry how we can all do better. It’s an important topic for us.”

John Paul DeJoria, a founder of Patrón Spirits International, is one of the world's foremost advocates for environmental responsibility, committing time and money to help make the world a better place. This commitment extends to Patrón's manufacturing, bottling, and packaging policies, and its charitable contribution efforts and practices within corporate offices worldwide.

The brand’s tequila is distilled and bottled at the Hacienda Patrón, nestled in the Highlands (Los Altos) of the Jalisco region of Mexico. Here the company adheres to strict practices to help limit the environmental impact of production. The tequila production process creates a leftover distillate, or "stillage," by-product. Rather than discard this, one of the processes that Patrón has developed is a reverse osmosis system that recovers up to 70 percent usable water from the stillage. This recovered water is then used in the facilities' cooling towers, and for cleaning.

Remaining stillage - up to 30% - is used to treat Patrón's compost area. Tequila is distilled from the native Weber Blue Agave plant, but not every part of this is used in the distillation process. Instead of disposing of the leftover agave as waste, Patrón takes this agave tissue, or "bagasse," and mixes it with the remaining concentrated stillage to create compost. This compost is then used to grow crops in the Hacienda's organic vegetable garden, helping provide food for Hacienda staff and visitors. The compost is also used to fertilize the agave fields and is given free to the town to use in area recreational fields and other gardens and land areas.

Patrón's environmentally responsible practices also extend into product packaging. For example, to help reduce paper usage and waste, Patrón has eliminated the majority of individual boxes for bottles of Patrón Tequila that are destined directly to bars and restaurants.

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 19 - November 2017

Global sales of agave-based spirits are poised for further growth, as Tequila's success as a popular spirit continues in the next few years, supplemented by the increasing significance of mezcal. A joint report out this summer from International Wines & Spirits Review and Just-Drinks estimates sales of the spirit will continue to grow for the next four years from 30m cases last year to 35m in 2021.

World Tequila Day is celebrated annually on 24 July, although in the US and Mexico it is called National Tequila Day.

© Søren Solkær

- In Depth / Premium Whisky -

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 20 - November 2017

- In Depth / Premium Whisky -

Creating a premium whisky bar Interest in premium single malt whisky is on the rise. There are between 118 and 120 live distilleries in Scotland actually in operation in Scotland today. Quite a few are mothballed and ironically the week we went to press three mothballed distilleries were being brought back into operation, with Diageo reopening Port Ellen and Brora, and a private equity firm is reviving Rosebank in Falkirk.

heard of. The mainstream pressure of have they heard of it, versus the quirky interest aspect of brands they have not heard of.

“What you want to avoid is an expensive inventory in your back bar that people admire but never buy instead only buying the major mainstream brands. You have to be comfortable talking about flavour, which is the next filter where you go to peated or non-peated.”

On the diagram (below), Bourbon casks are on the left, sherry cask on the right, the top quadrants are peated and the bottom quadrants are non-peated.

Explaining the chart, Craig says: “That is the

Scotch business in one image: the whisky is either peated or not peated and you either us bourbon casks or sherry casks. The bottom left is their core product – they also do specials that are different and use different types of cask. But the major mainstream things these guys produce. If you use an ex-bourbon cask which cost about 75 pence each and no peat in your distillery, you get the bottom left.

If you use bourbon casks and a lot of peat, which is most of Isla, you have such brands as Laphroaig, Talisker.”

Highland Park uses sherry casks, and in any one year its owner Edrington, which also

Source: Highland Park

I

nvestment in single malt is also on the up and up, with a lot of investors highly interested in getting into the category.

It’s not a cheap category because the capital investment and the cost of casks are prohibitive to quite a few people, so the barriers to entry to the category are tricky.

If today the number of distilleries is 120 then that number is expected to rise. So if you are a luxury bed & breakfast or boutique hotel bar owner looking to develop a portfolio of premium malt whisky, where do you start, and how?

Highland Park single Malt Scotch whisky brand director Jason Craig says tells Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine most people in such a situation try and develop a selection with regions. “You’ve got the Islands region, Highlands, Lowlands and Speyside, and the next unofficial region is Campbeltown, which alone used to have 60 or 70 distilleries on the peninsular on the extreme west coast of Scotland where it had good shipping opportunities out to the west. A lot would go to America.”

With the invention of air travel and larger, deeper ports the number has dwindled to just two or three active today in Campbeltown, he says.

For a boutique hotel bar owner the first filter for choice of premium whisky would be whether you want to cover the main Scottish whisky regions, says Craig.

“The next level brings you to a conundrum for most bars: they want something cool and interesting with a good back story, but they also want something that consumers have

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 21 - November 2017

- In Depth / Premium Whisky -

owns premium malt The Macallan, and also uses sherry casks, buys 90% of sherry casks that are available on the market.

“We therefore own a lot of the supply chain for sherry. It sounds bizarre but it is true: we pay people to plant acorns, to look after forests and harvest and replant trees, make casks, and we pay sherry companies to put their sherry into casks to season them for two years and then we give them their sherry back. A sherry cask is about 10 times the price of a bourbon cask and it delivers a lot more colour and flavour. If you look at the bottom right you will see The Macallan, Balvenie Dufftown – an oddity because it is from Isla and therefore should be peated like most whiskies from Isla, but it doesn’t use a lot of peat.”

Highland Park 10, 12 and 18yo bottles sit in the top right hand corner. “There are few if any whiskies that actively consistently use peat and sherry casks, which is where we sit,” he says. “On the flavour map, a boutique bar owner would probably have to have some whisky from the bottom left, and from the selection of six or seven there you would probably have Glenfiddich and Glen Livet because they are staples and very safe, and you would then also pick one of the others. You might take cardhu and with it Jura, for example.

“If you then went to the bottom right you’d probably have to have Macallan, Balvenie, and I’d argue that you’d probably also have to have Glen Livet.

“If you look at the top right quadrant again you will see our brand, one of the few that has both peat and sherry, which is why we are often called a great all-rounder and we win a lot of awards because we have a lot going on in flavour terms in the glass.

“The last level of filtering is price point.

The price point of these whiskies is of course higher than non-premium brands, with a Macallan for example retailing around £45 to £50 a bottle.”

Glen Livet, Glenfiddich and Glen Morangie are quite mainstream. “Most people who go out to buy a glass of whisky will have heard of all of them, but normally when you go into a boutique hotel or other small an interesting place to stay, you want something a little bit different.

Therefore people navigate by a brand they have heard of, by price point or by age. Your sweet spot is if you are a known brand with an age statement and with a price point,” he says.

A number of brands these days are going for non-age statement entry-level whiskies, unlike Highland Park. “Macallan did so for a couple of years, but they are going back to age. It is very much directed by supply and demand and availability of suitably aged stock that you can put into certain products.

“A luxury B&B might only need 10 or so single malts on the back bar, but they can probably go from mainstream to esoteric; they can go from palatable and easy to drink but relatively bland to quite extreme; and they can go from moderate to very highly priced depending on the age.”

Presenting a selection of premium whisky is more complicated than simply saying, here’s an interesting whisky with some interesting stories, says Craig. “Most luxury bed and breakfast and boutique hotels have a very experience F&B manager, which is fine, but often their expertise is restricted to wine or food or brandy and they don’t know about every category of whisky but with increasing prominence and sales as a category, and with new openings of distilleries, it is hard to keep track.

“If I ran a bar in a luxury B&B I would filter my selection by region, flavour, age and price point. It’s much easier to ask a consumer what kind of flavours you like. The answer might be. “I only drink Glenfiddich – I don’t really like that smoky stuff” you can start navigating quite easily, whereas if somebody walks in as a novice you are not going to serve them with a Laphroaig 18yo. Instead you are going to have to start them on a Glen Livet or something light and floral that they can drown in water or ice and it won’t bite them.”

KEEP PREMIUM INVENTORY Flavour does start to deteriorate to a certain extent once the bottle has been opened, but unlike wine, which does not like oxygen, as long as the whisky bottle cork is reasonably moist. An invaluable tip is to turn the bottle on its side for 10 minutes once a month to make sure the cork keeps it moisture, thus keeping it sealed. “If you do that, or even once every six months, then an opened bottle of whisky can last for years. If the cork deteriorates and air gets in then the whisky will cease to have as much depth to it as when it was first opened. It will still be drinkable for many years. People collect and store whisky for decades. Once it is made and in the bottle as Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 22 - November 2017

long as the cork keeps its moisture it is a fairly bomb-proof product,” says Craig.

SERVING WITH WATER? The best way to serve whisky depends on the individual’s pallet. Some people will add a drop to the whisky then gradually add more to investigate what happens to it until it is to the taste and strength they desire. But he says: “Absolutely everybody will agree that even one drop of water will cause a chemical reaction that opens up long chain molecules giving them the power to escape, and that is just chemistry thing – a good thing to do, whereas many people want their prestige of drinking single malt without the pain of sharp flavour.

“For them, four or five big cubes of ice basically kills all that flavour. The alcohol needs to react in your mouth and evaporate but if the alcohol is really cold when it enters your mouth then it doesn’t have a chance to evaporate – it just goes down your throat. With your tongue numbed by the ice if someone wants you to drink something and you think it will taste horrible the best way to o do so is with lots of ice so you almost do not taste it.

“Some people want as cold drink and will add ice to the scotch to achieve this but if you want the benefit of maximum flavour, don’t add ice, just add a tiny splash of water.

“But at the end of the day it is down to personal preference. People like the kudos of drinking scotch but not really into the flavours, and for others it is all about the flavour and they will gradually drip water in to see what happens to the whisky.”

Some whiskies have huge flavours and some are bland and almost identical to other whiskies. “I would always serve it with a small water jug and the option of ice, in a nice clean glass with curves like a wine glass so it can concentrate the flavours. The way it is served depends on the mood of the individual guest.”

RICH FLAVOURS The production process of all whiskies is very similar. All whisky is made with water, barley, yeast and a giant chemistry set. Water in Scotland is predominantly soft but even where it is hard it is not a flavour component. Most Scottish distilleries use one or two different types of barley, again this is not critical and is more about yield from the barley from which you are mainly extracting sugar to convert to alcohol.

- In Depth / Premium Whisky -

WATER AND ICE • A few drops of water: they open aromas. Scientifically, surface tension in the whisky breaks which allows other aromas to come to the fore.

Whether that is preferably to whisky lovers is completely subjective. In my experience some whiskies benefit from it, others have no notable difference. I suggest experimenting.

• A splash of water: allows the (un)trained notes to pick up underlying layers of aromas.

This is done by people who have an extensive interest in the flavour build-up of a whisky, e.g. whisky makers. Cutting the alcoholic strength to about 20/30% ABV allows the nose to pick up far more aromas than nosing the whisky at bottle strength. Obviously, the palate of the whisky changes due to the difference in texture. Whether this is preferable, again, is subjective. There are whiskies I only drink with water and some that I keep far away of any other liquid.

• Ice: chills the whisky, clunking up flavour molecules. Ice also chills the palate. You change the perception of the flavour because the tongue picks up a transformed texture and taste. In some cases, the texture is thicker and then taste gradually evolves. In other cases the texture is altered only slightly and taste is mostly lost. You can probably guess that this too is down to personal preference. Every year, when Spring comes, I look forward to sitting on a sunny terrace enjoying a fresh Macallan with big cubes of ice or a large ice ball. The ice melts very slowly, allowing me to enjoy the fresh chill on a warm day with the flavours folding open with every sip I take.

During winter months, listening to cold winds howling over the streets, my friends and me prefer a whisky free of ice – a welcome, warm gulf of happiness.

Source: The Macallan head of education Sietse Offringa

Jason Craig explains: “There are different types of yeast, but as I was told when I first joined the whisky business, when you create a sugary barley solution with hot water and barley, what you really want to get out of that is a conversion of sugar to alcohol, which is what yeast does. It is a very unglamorous way of saying it but as a young lad I was told I was told yeast comes along as a beastie and it eats sugar, it farts CO2 and it pisses alcohol. In a nutshell that is what yeast does. It effectively consumes all the sugar in a solution, gets rid of CO2 and then it has to get rid of the liquid.”

The only other two components of the whole process that can differ are height of stills. The shorter the still, the heavier the spirit, and it is either peated or in casks.

“All you are doing with peat is drying your barley,” he says. “If I am barley then I have starch and sugar inside me and when I grow I get wet I convert starch to sugar to grow and when it starts to grow all wet then all we want to do is stop it from growing. The way to do that is to take moisture out of it after it has started converting starch to sugar. Some of the distillers use peat for this process and literally light fires beneath big barley floors and slowly dry it. Because the peat smoke then gets absorbed into the barley it is effectively like wearing a wet jumper in a smoky bar: it just picks up all the smoke because your jumper is wet.”

The last area of difference is cask, explains Craig. “There are very few distilleries that use peat to dry their barley. That’s where this big smoky note comes from, a very popular note at the moment in terms of flavour. We are seeing peated whiskies are growing at about double the rate of non-peated whisky globally.”

It’s an interesting aspect but some people just can’t handle smoke and prefer light, bland easy-drinking whisky like Glenlivet, Glenmorangie or Glenfiddich which, compared to whiskies like Laophroaig or Highland Park, are not big on flavour, he says.

“Highland Park gives you that sweetness from sherry casks and the light smokiness from the peat. It gives you everything in a glass without being too pronounced in any one direction. It gives you a little bit of subtlety, it gives you some nice soft peat and some sweetness, whereas most whiskies give you one big flavour – it’s either soft and subtle, big and smoky or big rich and cherry sweetness.”

Premium whisky drinkers enjoy the sophistication and identify themselves with it as Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 24 - November 2017

much as premium wine drinkers do. If you’re going to drink it in front of Netflix with a bag of salt & vinegar it doesn’t matter what the wine tastes like as long as it is drinkable, but once you start getting into wine and flavours and types of grapes people are really fascinated by it. Whisky is very similar.

So how does a bar manager go about selecting a portfolio of premium whiskies for a boutique hotel or B&B bar, often subject to severe space constraints?

As a bar manager you need to consider several issues, he says. "There are a variety of flavours and diversity to choose from. Secondly you need to include bottles that are hard to find in the market and a variety to cover all different price points so you have something for the casual drinker but also something for anyone who wishes to treat himself or his guests to something really special and then navigating through that."

The most important thing is how to get your guest to understand different flavours and for them to feel comfortable with them wither navigating the menu or the bar staff recommending a drink.

There is little point in a B&B bar tender recommending a pricy, sophisticated and complex super-premium whisky to a guest who is simply after a casual sip.

A few boutique hotels stock fine and rare single vintage bottles retailing for between up to £36,000 a bottle. “They offer this really one single moment in time to enjoy when that liquid hits you,” says head of education at the Macallan Sietse Offringa.

He says a luxury bar in a hospitality environments benefits from their drinks selection based on three points: • A variety of whiskies for different occasions, from the everyday sipper and cocktail base to the extremely exclusive • A clearly navigable menu for their guests to choose their drink from featuring established luxury whisky brands • Well-trained staff who feel confident to advise guests with their expert knowledge on those drinks.

“The Macallan provides all three,” says Offringa. “We are regarded as the ultimate luxury whisky around the world. Through our obsessive quest for obtaining exceptional oak casks to mature our whisky in, we achieve a wide range of flavours and a myriad of natural colours. Because up to 80% of the flavour of our whisky comes from maturation, we see

- In Depth / Premium Whisky -

it as self-evident that we thoroughly source our casks from the best sherry bodegas in Jerez de la Frontera, southern Spain.”

The Macallan’s distributor offers expert advice on whisky as a category and has in-house training experts to plan sessions with bar staff in the luxury end of the hospitality sector. “To discuss their whisky range and ensure availability of desired bottle, I would advise luxury B&B and hotel owners to contact Maxxium UK,” he concludes.

WELSH WHISKY Besides Scotch whisky and the rapidly emerging Japanese whisky brands such as Yamazaki single malt cherry cask, there is now whisky that is once again distilled in Wales.

The last distillery in Wales closed in 1903.

Nearly a century later the lost art was brought back after a pub conversation in the Welsh valleys town of Hirwaun. A unique still designed

by Dr David Faraday and not yet commissioned had become available, and the local pub landlord, a great character called Alun Evans, had a warehouse a few miles away in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons National Park, which had its own spring water supply.

The still was, the site developed and it is where premium Welsh whisky Penderyn is distilled once again.

Managing director Stephen Davies tells Luxury Bed & Breakfast magazine: “The first whisky to come of age was tasted in 2004 in the presence of Prince Charles, and since then the distillery has gone from strength to strength with visibility in all UK multiples.

Penderyn now exports to more than 25 countries including Russia, Australia and China. Sadly Alun Evans died in 2015, but the distillery owners plan on naming the original still after him. Incidentally we commissioned a second Faraday still, as well as two lantern stills in 2013, which will allow us to massively increase our output, as well as experiment with new innovative whiskies.”

Davies says the whisky’s still is unique as a single copper pot version that produces new-make spirit at an industry high of 92%.

“This is far above the abv of spirit distilled in any conventional two pot system. This spirit is light and fruity, and is then married with our fresh spring water and casked in the finest US bourbon casks,” he says.

Nearly all Penderyn’s whisky starts its life in ex-Bourbons casks. Davies says: “Under US law Bourbon barrels can only be used once,

so single malt whisky producers have a plentiful supply of excellent quality casks. All the colour in our whiskies comes from the wood: there is no added colour. After maturing for a number of years we use a variety of casks for finishing. These add to the richness and the flavour. Currently we use ex- Madeira, Sherry, Red Wine, Port and Peated casks.”

Scotland has a surfeit of Peat, and famously peat-smoke their barley before it is mashed. Wales has no peat. Penderyn uses ex-Peated casks from Scotland, so its peated finish whiskies have a trace of smoke, whilst still being a fruity whisky. “Some find this combination very alluring, especially the French,” Davies observes.

Premium whisky in a cosy bar frequented by high-net-worth guests will sell better if a conversation about the story behind the whiskies occurs. A good story and a fine single malt go hand in hand, but Penderyn actually sponsors a literature prize - the Penderyn Music Book Prize for rock literature (www.penderynprize. com). “It’s in its third year now; judges have included Annie Nightingale, Shane McGowan from The Pogues and comedian Stuart Lee… and winning subjects to date include The Beatles, 1966, and the rise of the Rock Against Racism movement in the 70s and 80s,” he says.

"Penderyn enjoys stories. We’re very keen to promote Wales wherever we go. Wales is the secret Celtic nation. We don’t shout about our achievements. The Scots and the Irish are known the world over, but not so much the rather secretive Welsh. And yet 16 of the signatories on the US Declaration of Independence had Welsh ancestry, and no fewer than 8 US Presidents had Welsh roots. We had the biggest steel works in the world, one of the oldest literary traditions in Europe, and the most castles per square mile of any country on the planet.

“Yes, we like stories, as mentioned we even began with a chat in a pub. Another interesting story is that we currently employ three distillers, all of them women. We’re looking to expand soon and are eyeing up an old copperworks in Swansea and a former school in Llandudno, and we launched a new bottle in Paris in September that features wings and hallmarks. This is a major step forward for Penderyn,” he concludes.

Putting together a selection of premium whisky is by no means straight forward, but doing so certainly yields an enjoyable and educational journey.

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 25 - November 2017

TWO EXAMPLES OF EVERYDAY PREMIUM WHISKIES The Macallan Double Cask 12 Years Old is a very versatile single malt whisky suited for every occasion either on its own or mixed with e.g. dry oloroso sherry and ginger ale as an aperitif.

Matured exclusively in sherry casks from southern Spain.

The Macallan Rare Cask is ideal to celebrate rare occasions of meeting friends and business partners or indulge in the moment. Rich and multifaceted, due to maturation in a variety of sherry casks that have showed exemplary variation in flavour.

THREE EXAMPLES OF EXCLUSIVES The Macallan No.6 is a whisky matured in sherry casks from a single cooperage, showing the most powerful heart of European oak sherry casks. Presented in a Lalique decanter, it retails at £2,500.

The Macallan M is subject to availability, hand-numbered small batches with the ultimate Macallan flavours: rich, dried fruits, chocolate and spices. It retails at £4,000, and the whisky is held in a Lalique decanter designed by Fabien Baron.

Fine and Rare is a range of single vintage whiskies as examples of the finest casks in their respective years. Also subject to availability, these start at £10,000 per bottle.

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How to Get ‘Whiter than White’ Towels and Bedding When it comes to housekeeping goals, achieving ‘whiter than white’ towels and bedding is the holy grail. A recent study from Xeros proves that towel quality is a key brand touch point for guests.

The findings of the survey show 94% of guests think towel quality, in particular cleanliness, is important for overall customer satisfaction. It also found 73% of people think the quality of a hotel’s towels influences their decision as to whether to return.

At the moment, 80% of British hotels outsource their laundry operations but they could be missing a trick. The most effective way of ensuring your towels and linens stay as clean, soft and fluffy for as long as possible is to invest in a on-premise laundry facility that harnesses the revolutionary Xeros technology.

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- In Depth / Wine Cellars -

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 26 - November 2017

- In Depth / Wine Cellars -

Developing and maintaining a wine cellar If you have a passion for fine wine you can share it with your guests through conversation and perhaps keeping a few exceptional vintages in your cellar. While Converting a guest’s interest in drinking a top quality wine into buying is not straightforward, but is made very much easier if you have a cellar on display, equipped with the right temperature and humidity controls. Bill Lumley talks to the experts.

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here is a growing shift in attitude to wine. Not too long ago bar managers used to store their fine wine underground and seldom on display. These days people have become openly proud of their collection and they are thus bringing them above ground. Cellar Maison client consultant Simon Coombs says: “We are seeing a lot more of people actually wanting to put their wine on display and share it with their friends and family. It is also a great talking point.”

This trend casts a whole new dimension to renovation. Wine Storage Solutions managing director Roy Wilson says: “When the idea arises to establish a wine room, perhaps owing to available space within a boutique hotel or luxury bed & breakfast premises, the first requirement is to insulate the entire space – the ceilings, the walls, and if it is other than a ground floor, then the floor as well.

Wine Storage Solutions normally recommends around 60mm of insulating material such as Kingspan, Celotex or equivalent.

Wilson says: “Quite often these days owners want a wall to be glass so guests can look into the cellar with the lighting and thus create a feature. There is a trend of the last few years for demand for cellars that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing.”

Luxury bed & breakfast managers need to consider whether the proposed location for the cellar is appropriate to start off: you don’t want any surplus heat or light anywhere near it, so there should be no underfloor heating or direct sunlight.

Wherever there is a window on the perimeter of the cellar the fitters need to know how much glass is used. “It should always be double-glazed,” he explains. “There is a

danger with single-glazed that a difference in temperature may form condensation running down the glass on the warm side. When we have established the area of glass, we will make a calculation as to how powerful to make the air conditioning equipment.”

In the case of a very small area the installer can get away with using a small Monobloc unit, but most rooms require a split system whereby the condensing unit, sometimes referred to as the outdoor unit, is connected to the evaporator, or the indoor unit, he explains. The two are connected by copper piping, similar to an air conditioning system that has a big ugly box on the outside and an evaporator inside.

Wilson says: “We provide three types of evaporator. Often people do not want the evaporator in view. Normally it would be positioned on the ceiling or wall of the room itself, but a concealed version can be accommodated and if the ceiling is tall enough with a spare 400mm you can put in a false ceiling to thus conceal the evaporator.

“If the ceiling height does not allow this then the evaporator can be fitted in an adjacent room and be ducted through into the cellar.”

The company sells bespoke racking, the most popular being solid oak racking with a Danish oil finish that makes the oak wood a golden hue.

There is also a sliding case rack, a wine cube that resembles a big cross, and individual bottle racks finished off with LED lighting usually at the top, middle and bottom.

Business interruption during installation does not need to be punitive, he says. “A wine cellar can feasibly be fitted in the space of a day. But very often we go in and do what we Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 27 - November 2017

call a first fix, running the pipework that connects the outdoor and indoor unit – the condenser and the evaporator. If other building work is taking place, that can be a good time because very often channels are being put in for air conditioning or plumbing. Very often we liaise with the architect or the builder and undertake a first fix before coming back at a later date when the building work is complete, put in the evaporator and then when the plaster work is complete we then come back a third time, double-check the dimensions and put in the bespoke racking.”

Filling a space with a cellar that will preserve wine in the right conditions is not cheap. A small cellar could be around 10 sq m. A starting price for the display system and solid oak racking for that area would be around £15,000 excluding VAT, Wilson suggests.

The company recommends using a split system that does not require much in the way of maintenance. He says: “After the work has been finished the customer would be contacted by the refrigeration engineer to see if they wanted to enter into a contract whereby there would be a visit twice a year to make sure that it was running perfectly and any maintenance carried out. People who are in the market for this kind of thing do not want to be having to check an evaporator for instance to see if there is any build-up of anything – they want to rely on someone to come in and do it for them, which would cost about £150 a year for the two visits.”

Boutique hotels and luxury bed & breakfast businesses often employs their own architect and therefore by the time they approach a company to develop and install the room they have already reached an idea as to what style

- In Depth / Wine Cellars -

they want and they would present.

Equally customers ask for a transformation of a given space into something of a very high aesthetically pleasing standard and ask for recommendations. “We’d ascertain the number of cases they wanted to store if any, how many bottles, whether they wanted some of the bottles at a display angle or merely slotted horizontally to maximise the space. It is very much a matter of trial and error. Quite often we will come up with a solution and the customer will say it all looks fantastic, or that they like one part but can we change another.

We can accommodate every customer’s requirements,” he says.

Wine Storage Solutions does not limit itself to designing and installing cellars. “Luxury bed & breakfast businesses are very often not looking for something on the same scale as a hotel. A good solution for them might be a couple of upright cabinets, each able to hold 200 bottles. That would come in at just under £4,000 for two – one for white, one for red.”

These units resemble a refrigerator jazzed up with a glass door, lighting and hardwood fronts to the shelves so they are not unpleasant to the eye. These units can be set at anything between 6 and 18 degrees Celsius. A boutique hotel might have one for white at 6 degrees and one

for reds at 17 degrees. That means all their wine is perfectly ready to go, with no need to worry about bringing it down to room temperature or chilling it down if it is champagne.

It is important to observe that a lot of people keep their wine and champagne at home in the fridge and society in general is used to drinking white wine that is very cold, but in actual fact you don’t taste the full flavour of the wine has risen a little. A really good vintage white wine from a good producer would probably taste best around 9 degrees Celsius. If it gets served at 7 degrees Celsius then by the time it is poured into the glass it is 9 degrees Celsius and it makes all the difference.

So is the idea of letting a wine potentially breathe going to damage its premium flavour? “That’s a separate issue, but a really powerful Bordeaux relatively young but still drinkable will benefit sometimes from hours of decanting. It’s a question of the oxidisation process of the air heating the wine. It is quite a complex issue and separate from that of temperature,” says Wilson. “With a really old but good wine such as a 40-year-old Bordeaux coming towards the end of being at its best, I’d suggest not decanting it for too long since if you let it lie for a few hours it might just oxidise.”

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 28 - November 2017

CELLAR MAINTENANCE Cellar Maison looks after the ambitions of high-net-worth individuals and they often want someone to come along periodically to look after the collection and display. Coombs says: “We can do everything in that regard.

We design them, advise what will and won’t work and when they decide we will proceed to manufacture it and then install it.

“After that what we tend to do is work very closely with a master of wine so we can add to our clients’ experience the question of how they want to store their wines – by region, by wine roots, by vintage. We don’t just take these things off the shelf: everything is bespoke. We can then add on an inventory system and access to master of wine Marina Gayan who runs a company Gayan & Nathan.

Often they don’t want that level of detail – they just want a reliable and attractive storage facility into which to put their wine.

“The whole experience now is much more about enjoying it, seeing it, the aesthetics.”

ENGINEERING AND CREATIVITY AT WORK For most of the installations Cellar Maison develops it keeps the red, white and sparking together at 15 degrees, which for long-term

- In Depth / Wine Cellars -

storage of wine is about the best temperature. “If you chill wine too low for too long you are in danger of shrinking the cork and spoiling it so we tend to have them stored together. For the red they take it out and warm it up slightly and their whites they cool them down in a small nearby fridge for a couple of hours before they need it,” Coombs says.

There are pitfalls that he advises anyone looking to install a wine room should avoid.

“People often don’t know how to set up and operate the cooling correctly and how to interface that with the joinery, which is fundamental,” he says. “We blend engineering and creativity together and doing so without anything looking out of place such as pipework sticking out. These cellars have to be fit for purpose and looking around the marketplace at others’ models a lot of times they just aren’t.

“All the guys who work with us know how the systems work together. Sometimes you find a carpenter who does not quite understand how a cooling guy does something.

Cooling is fundamental: it’s even air flow letting the hot air out and the cold air in but doing so evenly, having sections cut out that allow air to flow – it’s all those nuances that really make a difference, he concludes”

VIEW FROM THE DESIGNER Jordan Design is a central London-based luxury hospitality and retail design agency whose work in designing wine displays includes Berry Bros, Le Clos wines shop-in-shop in downtown Dubai, a duty-free fine wine border store in Puttgarden, Germany, and a window display in the Emirates first class lounge at Dubai airport, for which it used exaggerated Alice-in-Wonderland perspective to recreate in a confined space the distinctive front of the prestigious store opposite St James’ Palace in London.

If you decide to commission a designer for your wine cellar, owner Ben Jordan says the first thing to clarify when you decide to install a wine cellar is the main reason you actually want one. “Of course you have some fine wines that you want to keep in peak condition so that they mature nicely without drying out or getting damp, but beyond that most people with such ambitions also want to do something else, and something to show off,” he says.

Jordan Design designed the flagship Dunhill store in St James’s, the landlord of which happened to be wine merchant Berry Bros. “We had to design a humidor for cigars, and that was all about understanding how to build a

temperature and humidity controlled environment. In designing a wine cellar, it’s valuable to celebrate the science behind it.”

For example you may have temperature-controls and hygrometers, which are instruments to measure water vapour in the atmosphere. Jordan says: “If I were wishing to charge very high prices for rare and exceptional wine, I’d want to make it very evident that the conditions within that cellar or wine storage enclosure is very controlled. You would thus have on show all the dials – the evidence that is really is being controlled.”

He is strongly resistant to the idea that a wine cellar should reflect the age of the designing the wine cellar in the style of the original premises. “My inclination would to make it look quite modern, using for example glass and metal.

“Everyone suggests using oak, which is precisely why I wouldn’t use it, because that’s what you’d expect. I’d use something that the punters wouldn’t expect, but which was still of very high quality such as a beautifully lacquered rosewood or even black steel.

Typically cellars in the homes of high net individuals comprise natural materials juxtaposed alongside modern materials.

People often tend to want a design that is the expected design, in this case oak, he says.

“If you are going to design something you may as well give it an edge, a bit of attitude. If it looks normal and what you’d expect you’re not going to notice it, whereas if it looks slightly unusual or unexpected then you immediately get people’s antennae going. In the BA first class lounge there used to be a very high-tech glass wall within which was a range of very fine wines, which is a good example of juxtaposing a 1962 Chateau Lafitte with plate glass and steel.”

So what about a luxury bed & breakfast that is Tudor through and through with a modern wine space right next to the bar for example. That would be a clash wouldn’t it?

“No it wouldn’t!” he exclaims.

“Look at the way the Italians go about design when they have an old wreck of a castle and they are putting in a restaurant or a museum, and that’s exactly what they do: they put very modern against the very ancient, and if it is done properly it looks really good. The last thing you want to do is try to blend in a new structure with the old structure. That’s never going to look anything other than an attempt to make it look like something it isn’t. Instead make it useful but modern,” he concludes.

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 29 - November 2017

TEMPERATURES With wine there are three temperatures that are significant.

All wine – red, white, rose, sparking – should be cellared at 12 degrees Celsius.

White wine should best be served at around 8 degrees Celsius.

Champagne should be served a little cooler at 6 degrees Celsius.

Red wine is best served at 16 or 17 degrees Celsius.

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Fine art restoration – what to do when your painting is damaged

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amage to works of art – accidental or otherwise – makes for a great news story. Readers with long memories may remember the unfortunate incident in 2006 when a visitor had a ‘Norman Wisdom moment’ at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge when he fell over his own shoelaces and knocked over three very large oriental vases. The force of the impact smashed the vases and created thousands of shards spread across a large area and dedicated staff spent many months restoring the vases back to a condition where they could be put back on display.

More sinister was the 2012 instance in the Tate Modern gallery in London when a Rothko painting was deliberately vandalised by an art blogger who climbed over the rope barrier to scrawl graffiti on the painting. The thick black paint quickly soaked through the layers of the painting and removing and restoring the multi-million pound work of art took eighteen months and £200,000 of the gallery’s funds before it was back on the wall of the gallery.

These are extreme examples of damage to works of art in the public domain. But there are many thousands of artworks which are vulnerable to damage whilst kept in private houses. Air conditioning, heating, dust, grease, and tobacco smoke all take their toll whilst there is always the danger of accidents occurring as part of day-to-day life.

Charles Anderson of the Fine Art Restoration Company recalls a recent incident when a client doing her housework accidentally tore through the surface of an eighteenth-century portrait with a vacuum cleaner. ‘The painting meant a lot to the owner and was examined by an insurance adjuster before being handed over to us as quickly as possible,’ he recalls.

‘The canvas was relined, and by the time we had completed the project there was no indication to the naked eye that the painting had been damaged.

Restoration costs are often less than you might expect: in this case the original valuation of the portrait in 2015 was £7,500.00, and the expert repair work cost £1,680.00.

Furthermore, restoration than replacement is good news for the owners of works of art as it may help keep the costs of their future insurance premiums down in future.

Natasha Sadler, insurance executive at Scrutton Bland explains ‘A fine-arts insurance policy generally will cover the entire cost of restoration and, if there is, for example, a 25% loss of value because of the damage, the insurer could pay the policyholder up to 25% of the insured value.

Your fine art insurance can be arranged as

a separate policy or combined with your main home and contents policy. We have extensive experience in choosing the most appropriate cover for your contents, and will aim to find the right cover to suit your personal circumstances, from one painting to private collections.’

For an initial consultation, in complete confidence, contact Natasha Sadler at natasha.sadler@scruttonbland.co.uk or tel 01206 838443

Scrutton Bland Financial Services Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 30 - November 2017

- In Depth / Glassware -

A clean glass every time It is imperative when pouring a fine wine to do so in a crystal clear glass. All too often glasses emerge from glasswashers with stains or other embelishments. If you have invested thousands of pounds in your wine cellar the last thing you want to happen is serve a potentially lucrative client a high value vintage wine in a surface-smeared wine glass.

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erek Maher, managing director at Crystaltech, a nationwide specialist in repairing commercial glass washers, writes the guidelines for Casquemark industry auditors on beer and wine quality, whose role is to ensure the glass is up to scratch.

It is not uncommon in a pub to order a glass of wine only to find the glass is stained and for the bar staff to wipe the stain with a tea cloth. Maher says: “The problem with tea towel drying is that it will have a fabric conditioner on it. But even if they do not use a separate conditioner, the washing powder itself will have a conditioner in it. So not only do you polish an oil film onto the glass, but you also rub the scent from the conditioner onto the glass as well.”

Another problem is that proteins from red wines and cask ales make the glasses used for these two drinks the most difficult to clean and conventional chemicals do not

work effectively. The solution is a chlorinated glass-washing chemical, generally known as Glasswasher Renovate, which would ensure that the glass is clean. “We would advise luxury bed & breakfast establishments to use this continuously when washing wine glasses,” he says.

A major tip is to leave the door of the glass washing machine open at the end of every evening. “The machine then dries out inside and the bugs die. It is the same with a conventional clothes washing machine: leaving the door open kills the bugs; leave it shut and they will have moist conditions in which to grow,” says Maher.

Another key tip is to use a chlorinated chemical and keep the machine clean.

He adds: “We also produce a system called Reverse Osmosis. The last thing that supposedly touches the glass in a wash is fresh water, but within that water there are minerals which result in the all-too-common grey-hued

Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 31 - November 2017

glass. Reverse Osmosis takes out all those minerals so the last thing to touch the glass is in fact completely pure water, with the result that you get completely clear glasses.

You can then take that absolutely clear wine glass straight from the machine and put them directly on the bar or dining table.”

In nearly all cases the problem of dirty glasses originates from pint glasses, and in particular real ales. Once the problem with the pint glasses is resolved then the wineglasses will improve.

To stay on top of the problem there are several things to look out for with glasses.

The first is to take a moist white serviette and wipe the inside of a supposedly clean pint glass. If there is a brown deposit showing then there is a protein build up on the glass.

Alternatively turn a pint glass upside down and look at the outer ring of the base. The poor results will be magnified and show up as a brown ‘halo’.

With glass washers, Maher advises, look for beige of black film or deposits around the door and hinges. This indicates growing yeast cells that will give poor results.

If the poor results are only minor it may be possible to solve the problem by increasing the detergent dosage manually.

He says: “Always ensure that there is detergent in the container and that it never runs dry. Dosing failure results in protein build up, which is difficult to remove and Renovate may have to be brought in to use.”

He also advises all filters be removed and cleaned daily and advises bar staff never to tip beer or slops into the machine.

Clearly there is some worthwhile investment required if you are to keep your wine glasses at premium standard.

- In Depth / Linen -

Matching habit with duvet for the luxury bed Francis Higney finds an interesting variety of guest sleeping habits emerging for boutique hotels to consider as he takes a look at trends in bed linen products.

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ith winter fast approaching, it might come as a shock (or maybe not!) to some hoteliers that it is the stiff-upper-lipped Brits who are the most likely people on the planet to sleep naked.

One-in-five are happy to divest themselves of cumbersome clothing and hop between the sheets in their birthday suits, according to new research from bed manufacturer Sealy UK. And in true Brexit style, we Brits buck the norm in most of northern Europe where it is usual for couples to sleep with individual duvets, even in a shared double bed. They believe the British are crazy for even contemplating sharing a duvet with another person - especially a naked one.

It’s just another consideration that must be taken into account when preparing bedding for an increasingly sophisticated and discerning customer base that expects his or her individual needs and expectations to be taken into account when booking a stay.

But now even fussy European visitors can have their every whim catered to by the discerning luxury b&b manager with the introduction of a duvet that can be heated to two separate temperatures - and will even make itself in the morning.

The Smartduvet Breeze duvet uses separate air chambers to deliver different levels of hot or cold air to each side of the bed. It can also be set to automatically make itself at a specific time each day, using inflatable tubes

to snap itself into shape ready for the evening - all controlled via a smartphone app.

The Canadian manufacturers claim that the Breeze could significantly lower energy consumption by allowing its users to heat or cool their body directly instead of the whole room.

As well as ending couples’ arguments over room temperature, the manufacturer says the feature could also help people suffering from arthritis and other conditions affected by temperature and humidity. And of course a bed that makes itself has obvious advantages in an industry that is time-constrained.

“The luxury boutique hotel industry has been growing exponentially in the last decade. With that comes a fierce competition to attract high-end customers to visit your hotel.

We believe Smartduvet can show that little extra attention to the guest's comfort and help make the client's experience a more personalized one. Of course, the technological aspect of the Smartduvet can also help hotels take a leap into the future,” says Tina Cayouette, founder of Smartduvet.

And it is the case that many high-end hotels and bed and breakfast establishments have gone to extensive lengths to ensure that this extends to providing the ideal sleeping environment.

Okay, you might not need go so far as four-time Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who solved the dilemma of what to buy his longtime ally Vladimir Putin by getting a cusLuxury Bed & Breakfast - 32 - November 2017

tom-made duvet cover for his 65th birthday which featured a lifesize image of the two men shaking hands, with a backdrop of Russian and Italian landmarks.

But there’s little doubt that it is in the magic of the mattress and the dopamine effect of a good duvet is where the secret of a good night’s sleep lies. And a guest that has enjoyed a good night’s sleep is one that is most likely to rebook and tell all their friends of the wonderful and relaxing experience they enjoyed at your establishment.

It’s surprising then that one of the biggest areas for complaint, according to The Hotel Guide, is the bedroom, with 59% of complaints about the bed being saggy or uncomfortable and 48% of comments about poor-quality bedding.

“It’s so important to feel comfortable and calm when you’re cosying up in bed, both in the appearance of the room and the naturally calming materials you’re surrounded by, says Jen Hing, a buyer with the French Bedroom Company.

“The indulgence of relaxation itself is something really special, and beautifully relaxed 100% linen is the new luxury in bed linen. Our Lisbon and Olivia bed linens are firm favourites.

Both the Lisbon and Isobel linens claim a naturally fluidity and generous weight, giving rise to a most luxurious drape in the fabric, she says.

- In Depth / Linen -

“For us, it’s all about the superb quality of the linen, the finishing touches of the relaxed ruffle edges of the Olivia bed linen, and the pallet of pinks, greys and whites you can combine which create the most perfectly tailored cocoon,” adds Hing.

It is common knowledge that the feel of a mattress, duvet, pillows, sheets and even pyjamas affects the quality of sleep. There are some natural thermoregulators, such as merino wool and silk. But there are also some very advanced man-made thermoregulators such as Outlast. Duvets that have moisture wicking abilities (Lyocell) can also improve sleep by reducing humidity at the skin surface level.

And some firms have out of this world products - very apt in the case of the Rested Outlast All Seasons which is the world’s only duvet that uses a Nasa-designed, thermo-regulating fabric which cleverly reacts to the fluctuating temperatures of the body, absorbing heat when too hot and dissipating it back when body temperature drops.

But customer demand is increasingly moving towards natural and sustainable products and hoteliers and the high-end of the market can no longer afford to overlook this.

Essentially, there’s a choice of natural fibres

(such as duck or goose feather and down, wool, silk or cotton) or synthetic fibre-filled duvets. While natural fibre-filled duvets are seen to be the more luxurious option, with advances in technology and how fillings are produced, many people believe synthetic products have now surpassed natural filled products as they both feel softer and are remarkably resilient over a long period of time.

But with 67% of consumers preferring products from sustainable sources, according to a recent Nielsen survey, ignoring this preference could prove costly to your business.

Duvets using down and feathers have an advantage here as they are a natural byproduct of the food industry. So recycling them into warm comforters means the down and feathers do not end up in our global landfills.

Since down and feathers are a natural fill material, they have a lower carbon footprint than products made from synthetic fill materials.

They are biodegradable, long-lasting so don’t need replacing so often and these factors will appeal to the environmentally aware guest.

Silk duvets are indulgent, hypoallergenic and long-lasting. And as a natural heat conductor and an exceptionally breathable fibre, it adjusts to the body’s temperature as well Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 33 - November 2017

as to the temperature in the room – making it a great choice for those that can sometimes feel cold, but other times can feel clammy and hot. But not all silk fibres are equal, with A-grade long-strand mulberry silk considered by many as the best you can get.

However tussah silk is gaining wider acceptance in the industry. Unlike mulberry silk, the tussah silk worm is capable of surviving in the wild. The Rested quilt is 100% tussah silk-filled and provides the important qualities of natural temperature regulation, moisture absorption, breathability, and a luxurious feel, but remaining “lightweight and floaty”.

The White Company of London prefers to go out on a wing with its high-quality duvet filled with 80% luxuriously soft goose down and 20% plump goose feather, which makes it feel light and comfortable to sleep beneath.

It claims that being encased in a luxurious 329-thread-count cotton percale and finished with an internal box construction for even warmth (meaning no cold patches), this duvet keeps the perfect temperature all night.

Complete with button holes and cufflinks, it means that you can build your own tog rating by joining two duvets together for the coming winter months.

- In Depth / Linen -

For the more discerning customer, ethically sourced, softest Pyrenean Duck Down provides a filling of the highest quality. Sourced from one of the coldest mountain environments imaginable, some believe it the best down filling available in terms of performance, warmth, feel and quality.

Trendsetter International bedding company takes a long-term view of the impact of its business, and suppliers are carefully selected with a high priority placed on fair working conditions.

It is also very active in driving change in the responsible sourcing of feather and down, with higher focus on animal welfare.

Its Smartfil product, included in the Boutique Silk range, is a range of tough fibres that are “silky-soft to touch” and include SmartfilAir for duvets and SmartfilClusters for pillows.

Its Breathe duvet, it claims, is highly breathable and exceptionally light, as the 80% Smartfil Air filling is blended with 20% modal, a fibre derived from natural wood pulp, which helps to wick moisture away from the body, helping to create the optimum sleeping temperature.

The Boutique Silk Duvet has a 100% cotton jacquard cover, making the feel of this duvet more like a traditional natural duvet, the cotton cover being similar to those used on feather products, giving the duvet a crisp, fresh finish, with an elegant jacquard design.

Sara Nolan, Business Development Manager at The Fine Bedding Company Hospitality, a division of Trendsetter, says: “As a company, we’re committed – and in fact we are leading the industry – to sourcing responsibly sourced feather and down. This, along with sustainably sourced cotton, is a strong message to Luxury Bed & Breakfast - 34 - November 2017

take to hotel guests.

“We aim to give hoteliers a wide choice to meet their needs, hence our range includes natural fill bedding products through to synthetic duvets that can be washed, dried and back on the bed within a day.

“We spend a lot of time talking with housekeepers and bed & breakfast owners specifically to understand their needs and challenges then brief this into our product development team to find solutions. This drives our continued innovation.”

The Old Rectory at Stewton in Lincs is one of an increasing number of luxury bed and breakfasts that offers a choice to the customer.

“All our bedding is 100% cotton and all the beds have down duvets and pillows but synthetic bedding is available for those who prefer it,” says proprietor Alan Palmer.

Sumptuous fabrics with unique feature beds, finished to perfection with crisp white Egyptian cottons and perfectly plumped pillows, are just some of the reasons why The Old Inn, Crawfordsburn, was declared AA Hotel of the Year for Northern Ireland 2017-2018.

Head Housekeeper, Michael Joseph explains: “My team is trained to deliver an exceptional level of housekeeping, but this can only be attained by using an excellent quality product to impress our customers and ensure they wish to return again and again. We take great care to source quality fabrics for each of the bedrooms and each room is thoroughly inspected prior to guest check in, to ensure superior standards are maintained. In a world of increasing allergens and air particles, each room is very carefully prepared.”

Indeed we are living in an age where allergies seem to be all too prevalent. One of the most common forms of this ailment is an allergy to dust mites. This is something suppliers and hoteliers have been looking at much more carefully with regards to linen and duvets supplied to the hospitality industry.

One solution is to look to Merino Wool. It is naturally resistant to dust mites, mould and mildew as well as being a sustainable source.

It is also capable of absorbing 35% of its own weight in moisture, so aiding body temperature regulation.

A spokesperson for the London-based Rested company says: “Wool is a product that excels in all aspects and we have carefully selected our Merino wool to create duvets that perform and feel soft and supple with excellent drape.”

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