£90 Million Boost For UK Tourism (and Pub Trade?)

More good news for the hospitality sector; HMG has committed a further £90 million to help promote the UK as a place to visit and do business in. Forecasts are that some 32.6 million people will visit these shores during 2014, spending some £21.5billion!

New markets for our visitors to come from include China, Malaysia, South Korea and Mexico, and new (relaxed) visa regulations are forecast to see a step change in visitor numbers from these countries.

Now being that pubs are in the center of hospitality in the UK and being that "to visit a British Pub" is often on the list of reasons to visit the UK, it seems to me there is a few quid to be made here by our over-worked, under-paid (apparently) licensees.

I have tried to work out on my calculator that if say 20% of the £21.5 billion is spent in pubs and that there are some 50000 pubs left, how much could each see in their tills? Unfortunately my calculator does not allow for such large numbers, all it tells me is that there is plenty to go around!

Which pubs will benefit the most? I'll bet it's those that market their businesses the best! 'Hospitality' is the Bedrock of the UK economy, so says a report from Visit Britain and their GREAT campaign; The Great British Pub is at the heart of it!!


Martin Read CMBII
Managing Director of Inn-Dispensable Personal Licence Courses

Wetherspoon Take The Throne for 'Loo of The Year'

Ask a pub-goer why they choose one pub over another and you will hear loads of reasons: the food, the range of beer, the other customers, the staff, the prices and special offers, live music, live sport, location, car parking, the log fire, the atmosphere, the landlord, newspapers, Wi-fi, coffee, customer care and many more wonderful reasons.

Ask any pub-goer why they wouldn't visit a particular pub ever again (and also tell everyone they know not to visit) and you can be sure that the number one reason will be… "Their toilets stink!"

Congratulations to J D Wetherspoon who have once again won the national pub category in the Loo of the Year 2013 awards. They also have the highest number of gold and star entries (individual toilets are judged zero to platinum by independent assessors).

Loo of the Year managing director Mike Bone said "Wetherspoons exciting and wonderfully equipped toilets not only exceed expectations, they also meet the needs of adult users, children, babies and people who need an accessible facility. Their toilets have the WOW factor".

What a fabulous accolade for a chain of pubs totalling some 900 in the country, if a pub chain with 900 outlets to care for can do it, surely Fred and Mable running the Dog and Duck can do it?

Knowledgeable Bar Staff Sell More Beer

Fred, a long way from home, popped into the Dog and Duck, longing for a pint of good traditional 'real beer' (call it cask ale, call it hand pulled, call it cask conditioned, call it non fizz, call it dry hopped) call it what you like but the essence is that it is brewed naturally and is created from only four main ingredients:

• Hops – to add flavour and aroma
• Malt – to provide fermentable sugars
• Liquor – the brewer’s name for water
• Yeast – to start the fermentation process

Each individual brewer then puts his or her 'Chef’s Hat' on and brews to their own recipe. That's why the fabulous range and diversity of Cask Ales exists within the pub world. Different flavours, colours, strengths, hops, barley, liquor (water), tastes, head retention (the foam), different lacing (the foam as it sticks to the glass), different smell, different glasses to serve it in, different methods of dispense (top fill, bottom fill), different knowledge needed to understand its constitution et al. And all information available for hundreds of beers via Cyclops!

Cyclops Beer is a way of describing beer so that you can find out quickly and easily what a beer will look, smell and taste like. It tells you whether a beer is hoppy or sweet and helps you to discover what you like and what you don’t, so that choosing a beer becomes easier in the future.

British beer is incredibly varied with a whole host of different styles and tastes. Cyclops will help you to discover more about the many thousands of different beers available and make your choice at the bar easier. So are you a hophead, a sweet tooth or a balance of both? Is your favourite beer dark and smoky or golden and grapefruity? Over 1500 beers have been 'Cyclopsed'.

Back to Fred, he looked along the bar counter and saw three choices of Cask Ale on sale. Now, since he was well away from his home territory he had never come across any of them. He asked the bar person to take him through the range and what do you know, the bar person had no idea! Now Fred figured that if they don't know about the beer they sell, then they probably don’t look after it too well either, so he left and went to the Kings Head along the road - where he found a bar person who knew their stuff (It ain't rocket science).

So come on you Landlords, train your staff to be knowledgeable (knowledge is power). Come on an Inn-Dispensable Beer Quality course, learn how to sell the highest quality beer and use Cyclops to impress your customers and keep them from going elsewhere!

Beat your local competition by selling top quality products with top quality knowledge. And all of you customers; get more demanding, ask staff for advice, see what they know. You wouldn’t buy a new computer without expert advice I’ll bet!