Bord Failte has announced details of a strict sytem of classification for self catering properties to be operated on its behalf by Excellence in Tourism Ltd. for group schemes for group schemes of eight or more properties and by Regional Tourism Authority and Shannon Development for groups of less than eight properties. The classification runs from one to four stars, and gives people a very useful guide to the standard and facilities they can expect of any property.

Basic minimum regulations are laid down for heating, lighting, ventilation, storage facilities, building regulations and fire protection. In addition there is an extensive minimum inventory of equipment required of all properties – this includes cutlery, crockery, utensils, cookware, household items, cleaning items and bedding.

The next Ireland Travel Trade Workshop, an international gathering of tour operators organised by Bord Failte is to be held in Killarney. The workshop, which is the largest travel trade event in the Irish tourism calendar, will take place in May next year.

The event attracts 350 tour operators from all over the world who meet with 500 Irish product providers over two days. Familiarisation visits to the various regions will take place before and after the two days of business.

The 2002 CERT Annual Conference will take place on Wednesday, 27 November 2002 in Dublin Castle. The key themes of competitiveness, productivity and performance will form the basis for discussion at the conference.

Speakers at the conference will include John Lund, Chief of Staff, Disneyland, Paris and leading industrialist Brian Patterson. New CERT research will be presented by recognised leaders in the field. President Mary McAleese has graciously agreed to attend the conference and address the delegates.

The Federation welcomes the ITIC report into the impact of tourism on the Irish economy. The findings of the report serve to highlight the importance of the tourism sector to the Irish economy, underlining the significance of the sector in buoying up the Irish economy. "The significant contribution, in terms of exchequer returns, that the tourism sector makes to the Irish economy should not be underestimated," said Jim Murphy, President, IHF.

"We do share the concerns highlighted in the report of increasing costs and the need for competitiveness within the hotel and guesthouse sector.

However to regain the peak year 2000 levels of tourist numbers, every effort needs to be made both by the industry and with the support of Government, to focus on a future growth strategy that is shock resistant to ensure the livelihoods of owners of hotels and guesthouses throughout the country," he continued.

Recent surveys have consistently shown that the Irish tourism product is appreciated by visitors - 93% of respondents in the recent Bord Failte visitor attitude survey claimed that they were more than satisfied with the level of service they received together with the value for money. It is reassuring to the industry that Ireland is therefore being perceived as one of the most successful destinations in the world.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland recently launched a national initiative to urge all food premises throughout the country to proactively demand, and receive assurance of high standards and adherence to food safety regulations from their suppliers.

The ‘know your supplier’ initiative follows research carried out by the FSAI which highlights one of the key concerns facing food businesses is their confidence in the safety of food and ingredients purchased from suppliers. In the interest of public health, food businesses should only purchase products from suppliers who operate to the highest food safety practices.

The initiative will involve a national advertising campaign as well as industry focused initiatives to encourage all those in the food chain to demand and receive assurance of high standards from suppliers. All food businesses have a legal responsibility to produce safe food and those found in breach of the law could not only suffer prosecution, but their reputation could be irreparably damaged.

The protection of consumer health is paramount and should come before profit or any other consideration. Hotels need to stipulate that food safety requirements are included in their purchasing specifications for suppliers. Each businesses’ reputation is only as good as its weakest supplier. When a food poisoning incident occurs in a hotel, the hotel may receive the greatest amount of adverse publicity and suffer the greatest commercial damage. They may have had the high standards themselves, but be let down by the supply of unsafe produce.

Many web users are of the impression that copyright, trademarks and the usual rules of commerce don’t apply to material published on the Internet. This isn’t true — the rules apply just as much as anywhere else and the penalties are just as severe.

Images: there’s a mistaken belief that once an image is on the Internet there is no copyright on it; this is not the case. It is easy to copy an image from a web site — in most cases, right click whilst the mouse is over the image and a menu with an option of copying the image will appear. Once copied it can be used like any other image on a hard disk; however, the owner’s copyright is breached if the picture is used without their permission.

There is a cunning way of using someone’s image without copying it — a link to the original picture can be created and it will appear on a web site directly from the original server. This is still copyright infringement but it’s compounded by "bandwidth theft". This means that not only is one using the original image, but also using the bandwidth — the traffic on the Internet — paid for by the person hosting the original copy of the image

Text: the same rules apply as those for images — if it’s someone’s original work, another person can’t copy it without permission. The text isn’t just what is seen, it includes specially written scripts, the actual mark-up of the web page and the contents of the meta tags.

Trademarks: occasionally one sees a site with the names of rival companies in their meta tags. The idea is that, for instance, "Bloggs Soft Drinks" can boost their visitors by having "CocaCola™, Pepsi™, Dr Peppers™…" in their keywords. The hope is that when people type CocaCola™ into one of the search engines, instead of going to the CocaCola™ site, they’ll be taken to the Blogg’s site. As a marketing strategy this doesn’t work, people simply leave and look for the site that they wanted — however, this strategy does leave the owner of the web site open to civil damages for trademark infringement and recent cases in the US have carried very high penalties.

Links: I’d like to say clearly that the web works because people link from one site to another — no one can be prevented from putting a link from their site to another one. What isn’t allowed is the appearance of someone else’s site within another site so that it looks as though it’s the same material. This can happen with frames, if a site is built with frames, click on any links that go to other sites and make sure that the new site appears in its entirety — if it appears within a frame on a site copyright is being breached.

Legislation on the web is still in its early days but the copyright rules still apply and the penalties for breaching them can be severe, so it’s worth making sure that a business’s site is on the right side of the law.

Peter can be contacted at petermcc@inn-site.net

The Irish Hotels Federation are running a series of workshops focusing on the management of rates on online booking engines, in particular focusing on the booking engine on www.irelandhotels.com and a number of new initiatives now featuring on the site.

Two workshops have been scheduled for November;

A glut of tax deadlines is fast approaching because of recent changes to the tax year and there is expected to be the last minute rush by business customers in order to get their tax affairs in order.

On the 31st October capital gain tax becomes due, as does preliminary income tax payment for 2002. Pension payments, which can be made to reduce tax owed, are also due to be made in the coming six weeks.

AIB Bank has a lending product call PromptPay specifically designed to facilitate the payment of large once off annual payments by spreading the costs over a period of 11 months.

The payment of preliminary tax puts a strain on the liquidity and capital resources of a business and can complicate cashflow planning. Widely available in all AIB Branches the Promptpay features include:

• Loans available from €6,500 upwards
• Speedy decision
• Competitive rates
• Application through any AIB Branch

Further details of PromptPay can be obtained by calling into any AIB Branch or calling directly to 1890 474747.

At a recent HOTREC meeting I was approached by a representative of the Hungarian Hotels organisation enquiring as to why Ireland was so anti EU enlargement. I was able to reassure him that the Irish Hotels Federation were encouraging a Yes vote in the upcoming Nice Treaty Referendum. The question highlighted to me the importance of a Yes vote not only for millions of people in Europe but also for the perceived image of Ireland as a welcoming and caring society. HOTREC are working closely with all the accession countries and are inviting their hotel and restaurant organisations to participate in a general assembly meeting next Spring. The Irish delegation to this assembly will be placed in a very difficult position if the Nice treaty is rejected. I believe that a Yes vote is essential if we are to avoid a period of unprecedented uncertainty, which would create a very difficult environment in which to promote business and investment. I urge you to read the information leaflet distributed to all members and encourage your staff to use their mandate and vote. Not only are we determining our own future when we vote but we will also be impacting on future generations of citizens in other countries.

My message in the September issue of Innsight outlined how we were going to deal with the rip off allegations directed at our industry by members of the media.

This one-sided debate has continued with the leaking of part of the Tansey Report commissioned by I.T.I.C. We welcome the report and believe it is a balanced opinion of the difficulties we face trading in the current economic environment. We will continue to insist that we get the opportunity to debate the findings of this report when it is published in October. We are not prepared to discuss a draft document that has been leaked to the press where a balanced view of the full findings are not reported.

We are always looking for ways to continue to attract people to work in our Industry. I have always believed that by exposing young people to the "buzz" of the Hotel and Guesthouse industry as early as possible will help the decision making process later on. During a recent rip to Greece I saw a wonderful example of how to expose young people to Hotel life in a fun way. The Hilton Resort Hotel in Rhodes had an extensive Kids Club for 4 to 12 year olds. Both of my children fitted into their age group and I was able to witness first hand the excitement when they were being brought on a hotel tour. This was no ordinary tour of the public areas, but a warts and all tour behind the scenes of a busy conference hotel. The tour ended in the kitchens where they met the chefs, were given uniforms and proceeded to make and cook pizzas.

This positive insight into how a hotel works really struck a chord with all the children. If you consider that these tours happen on a weekly basis over six months of the season surely in 10 years time we will have budding chefs, waiters, managers etc. joining our industry thanks to the Hilton in Rhodes. My two were certainly impressed.