12
Hygiene
s the events industry
prepares to re-open – in
an as un-yet unknown
form – the subject of
hygiene continues to be top of the
agenda. Ensuring clean standards
is the cornerstone of government
guidance and common sense, but
ideally such things must meet
certain criteria.
Indeed, VisitBritain are in the
process of rolling out an audit
scheme, in which event
businesses must comply with set
hygiene criteria and show a kite
mark. At the time of press,
however, full details have not been
released. However, there is plenty
more going on.
As a major initiative to kick start
the events, meetings and
accommodation industry in post
pandemic recovery, the Hotel
Booking Agents Association
(HBAA) is collaborating with
Quality in Tourism to promote its
‘Safe, Clean and Legal’
accreditation as a recognised
industry standard of hygiene and
cleanliness for venues and hotels,
including Covid-19 protocols. The
aim, of course, is to foster
customer confidence among
delegates and staff.
The HBAA’s regulated
accreditation is awarded to hotels
and venues that meet or exceed
minimum set standards across a
wide range of factors, including
compliance with hygiene and food
safety regulations. All properties
submit their standards and are
then audited to ensure they
maintain the rigorous levels of
cleanliness and safety, providing
greater reassurance to customers.
Quality in Tourism has been
assessing properties and driving
standards across the UK for over
15 years, offering advice, support
and benchmarking assessments
for tourism and hospitality
businesses. It covers hotels,
venues, apartments and other
accommodation providers
CLEAN
BILL OF
HEALTH
Venues are going to need
to meet strict cleaning standards
when they reopen, and a number
of accreditation schemes are
now available
throughout the UK.
Juliet Price, consultant
executive director of HBAA noted
that the trade association
identified the need to have a
uniformed and united standard
across the industry. “We are
spearheading this standard
enabling customers to feel
assured that the accommodation
and venues they are using are
compliant with the latest
government guidance and agreed
protocols,” she said.
Since mid-June, a number of
venues have announced their
plans to reopen, and which have
all included explanations of their
hygiene programmes. Yet, there
must be some manner of
consistency, to which Price
alludes: “While we continue to see
more hotel chains and venues
present their own cleaning
standards, which we welcome, we
do need to drive consistency on a
level playing field.
“HBAA continues to collaborate
with industry associations and is
requesting that this accreditation
is communicated among their
membership and features
prominently in RFPs and part of
hotel and venue selection criteria.
“This initiative is to create a
unified approach that is
recognised, certified and assured,
regardless of which association
they belong to, or who their
customers are. We have actively
engaged with many associations
and requested that everyone gets
behind this, for the good of our
industry.”
Deborah Heather, who is the
director at Quality in Tourism
suggested that the Safe, Clean
and Legal scheme was designed
in 2018, and has been updated to
include Covid-19 cleaning
protocols. “We have worked with
Environmental Health to develop
protocols and standards for hotels
and venues to protect their teams
and their guests,” she added.
This accreditation badge has to
be clearly displayed across
multiple platforms, for
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