A fresh approach to accommodation accreditation
In response to the concerns of member destination we have looking at the needs to differentiate and award those who work within the rules to provide a quality offer and those that may or may not, in a sector increasingly influence by self-accreditation based platforms and user reviews; consumer reviews that will naturally start from the assumption that what’s offered is bound to safe and legal and we’ll judge if it clean and of quality, or it wouldn’t be promoted. Sadly, we know that this natural assumption can often at best be heroic and that increasing new technologies and new platforms are compounding not rectifying historic accommodation issues, especially around safety and legal non-compliance through ignorance, omission or even deliberate deceit.
Quality in Tourism (QiT) have recently announce and launched “three new modernised and great value quality assessment schemes to reflect the dynamic developments happening in accommodation. The schemes start at an entry-level with the “Safe, Clean and Legal” scheme, moving on to a full Quality Star Rating Assessment and then a new “Unique” Accommodation Assessment Scheme designed for properties that offer their guests the WOW factor by being unusual or having special facilities”.
We at British Destinations believe that the safe clean and legal scheme, in particular, offers destination managers and individual businesses a really useful tool to start clearly differentiating their product in a sea of user reviews. It has the potential to help restore some more order to destinations’ online or print based accommodation promotion policies and it may also be of equal interest to local accommodation associations and others who have largely moved away from insistence on membership of quality grading schemes. To take matters forward we have worked with QiT to produce a briefing document aimed at destination manager and management organisations: QiT and British Destinations whilst specific information on what Safe Clean and Legal actually encompasses can be found in the QiT briefing note: SCL – Standards Jan18 .
Individual businesses wishing to learn more or get engaged should contact QiT using the website links and general QiT email address. Destination manager and local accommodation associations should contact Andy Woodward directly: andy.woodward@m-assessment.com 0845 300 6996 in order to find out more or to arrange a meeting to discuss local needs and explore local benefits and opportunities in more detail.
British Destinations 