Following introductions by our Chair, Ben Mayou, the floor was taken by Matt Willacy from For-Sight, our newest sponsor.

An interesting presentation looking at the influences and opportunities to consider when working hard to attract and retain guests. Good and well thought through personalised automated communication key to increasing loyalty for repeat and direct bookings.

Clive Wilson and Tracey Cragg gave an update of a few of the LDHA initiatives, touching on:

Sponsors: We’re very grateful to our sponsors and want to ensure our relationship with each develops and remains fruitful for both sides. Something we’re keen to explore in 2024 is to provide an 'education piece' for our members and across the team not necessarily always to the top brass. We plan to introduce some working groups and webinars led by the expertise of our sponsors.

We’re also delighted to welcome on-board Right Revenue as a sponsor in 2024. A summary of what they are about is attached. They will join us in person for our members meeting in February (28th) but will introduce themselves via a webinar planned for the end of Jan where they will tackle the ‘prickly' subject of OTAs.

Guestline: Harry Kitchin from Guestline touched briefly on the launch of their Guest Voucher. Although too late to capture the market this year, whilst the business of ‘vouchers’ is front of your sales and marketing teams' minds, Harry will run a couple of online seminars in the next couple of weeks to introduce this new add-on to Guestline’s services.

Dates in the diary are:

• Tuesday 5th Dec at 11am, or

• Thurs 7th Dec at 2pm

We will send around an invitation to join.

UKH: David Sheen, Public Affairs Director for UK Hospitality gave a response to the Autumn statement and rise in minimum wage

Schools: LDHA continue to encourage members to forge a partnership with local schools - focus on primary at the moment following Antony Penny’s talk at HeadTeachers’ conferences on our behalf and a follow-up open evening at North Lakes Hotel in early Nov. Engaging with teachers will lead to the children having a fun and memorable experience that they will take with them as they progress to senior school and begin to choose options and look at career opportunities.

On the back of a funding application to the Savoy Trust by Adrian Ellis who heads up Manchester Hotels Assc, and supported by LDHA, Laura Johnson has now been employed as Hotels & Schools Liaison Manager for the Hospitality Connect project. Tracey Cragg will be meeting with her and Cath Dutton in December to see what plans she has and work to try and push these forward within our membership.

Colleges: Both Runshaw and Blackburn Colleges have been very active in this first term. With approx 150 students visiting to ‘experience the Lake District’ and find out more about carrier opportunities in our sector.

Thanks to those members that have taken the time to engage with the students:

Lakeside Hotel, Windermere Lakes Cruises, Mountain Goat and University of Cumbria as well as much appreciated contributions from CT and Graham Hadaway from Hargreaves Enterprises. These joint ventures have given students, who have previously shown no desire in coming to the area, enough of an interest to request work placements in the Lake District.

Work placements, although short, will continue to show what a great offering we have and give those participating the opportunity to encourage the students to return to work in the holidays at peak periods.

It’s worth noting that, as a direct result of his efforts working with the colleges over the past 12 months, Ben has gained 4 full time members of staff at Lakeside - proof that it’s worth the effort :-)

Angie Anthonisz from University of Cumbria is also seeing a swell in the number of college students keen to study the degree apprenticeship.

In order for the above to continue to succeed we need:

a) hotels to host student conferences

b) hotels to support the UoC degree apprenticeship

If you can do either or both of the above please let Tracey know.

Surveys: Thank you to the 17 properties who participated in the recent Salary Survey. Occupancy survey will be the next one but not until the new year when we hope you will have some occupancy to report on!

Roger and Guest Cards:

As you’ll be aware, the LDHA Guest Cards offer hotel guests added value when booking local attractions. They are good but would be even better if more visitor experiences were involved. In order to entice more attractions to sign up to the card we need to prove its popularity and success. So, very chicken and egg!

In order to ensure that hotel reception and FoH staff are really buying into the idea, the association are employing the charms and social expertise of Roger Benson. Some of you will know him from, amongst other things, his long service at Briery Wood Hotel. Roger will, over the next few months, visit hotels and chat to the teams about the initiative. We ned honest feedback from the folk that know - is it working well; what can be improved; we can provide marketing material if required… It’s important of course that the reception teams have visited the visitor attractions and know what they are recommending to guests. This can be arranged just let Roger know what you need.

We hope to be able to talk to additional attractions with fantastic statistics showing why they should get involved - a great way to increase the collaboration between hotels and attractions - the visitor economy pulling together.

Last but not least to take the floor was Tim Farron, Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale.

As always, Tim spoke with passion and reason about topics close to his heart and those highlighted by the government’s Autumn statement.

I have an audio recording of the speech and following Q&A if you are interested to listen. I must point out the recording’s not great but covers the following:

The real effect of Tax cut and NI cut will be minimal.

Lake District the most populated National Park 80% of working public already working in hospitality and tourism

Overseas market returning but slowly, a reduction in VAT may help encourage this market back

Need for long term investment - T levels and apprenticeships to encourage staff retention - build the managers of the future

Public transport now subsidised by Westmorland and Furness Council

Skills and size of workforce important

Visas may help in short term

Recent visitor economy stats: 80% struggling to find staff; 63% operating below capacity

Housing - long term problem; second home owners. Decimation of local communities due to Air B&B

Need for affordable housing

Implement a heavy tax on second homes.

Q&A

A66 what can we do to get development over the line?

50% more dangerous than other major roads.

Decision delayed - make a fuss! Plans are a long way down the line to work unlikely to be cancelled but might be if election called in May

Write to Tim to raise concerns

6k new workers for BAE

Improve roads for accessing BAE?

Widening A590? Unlikely more likely to control speed to reduce number of accidents

Benefit to creating a road from Heysham to Barrow to add production of tidal energy as well as access

Bus route and charges improved to encourage use by workers particularly from Barrow to central Lakes

Tourism Tax - maybe popular with locals if they feel it will only be paid by visitors.

What can we do to communicate the benefit of visitors to our area ie the importance of our industry to local economy.

Locals frustrated with congestion and volume of people.

Schools at risk due to declining number of pupils, leads back to the lack of affordable housing - no longterm rental market.

Not a big call for the tourism tax

Only 15% of visitors stay overnight so ‘punishing’ the wrong people.

Needs fairer allocation of funds at source eg GPs see a large number of visitors but no extra funding

Educating visitors how to look after the lakes whilst here - visitors will over time spend money and contribute to the visitor economy.

Introduce a ‘tax’ for having a second home in the area - enforce application for planning permission to change purpose of property to a second home to allow control of numbers of second home owners.

Also look at re-purposing some of the empty properties in town centres - safer to have the towns lived in.

Dates for Diary:

• UKH Northern Committee - Wed 29th November (11am Zoom)

• GUESTLINE ‘GuestVoucher’ webinar - Tues 5th & Thurs 7th December

• UKH HR Directors Expert Group - Thurs 7th December

• LDHA PEOPLE GROUP - Wed 24th January

• RIGHT REVENUE - Wed 31st January (TBC)

• LDHA MEMBERS’ MEETING - Wed 28th February