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July at last! The peak season is upon us, and Dorset’s beaches – weather permitting – will be packed, the county’s hotels and B&Bs will be full to bursting, village pubs and cafes will be struggling to cope, and visitor attraction bosses will be briefing their staff on crowd control techniques.

So, as if county’s leisure industry didn’t have enough its corporate plate at the moment, now is the time to start thinking, not just about the shoulder season, but also about the bleak midwinter to come.

As the Christmas carol says, earth will stand hard as iron, frosty wind will make moan, and there is a tendency to think there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Rubbish!

For the leisure industry, July and August are a no-brainer. Open for business, be nice to the customers, and laugh all the way to the bank. September’s OK, October can be a bit quiet, and November and December are all about Christmas shopping and Christmas itself.

Then, as night follows day, come January and February – the hospitality industry’s equivalent of the dead zone. A great many places will simply shut up shop, business bosses will head off to the Canaries or the Caribbean, and try to forget the seasonal slump.

It doesn’t have to be that way. There is plenty of scope to keep the customers coming, and the tills ticking over, even in the lean times.

The crucial point is that this does not apply merely to the hospitality and leisure sector – it applies to Dorset businesses in general.

All the facts, figures, records and research suggest that people want to get away in the post-Christmas period – they just need a reason (or an excuse) to do so. They want something to do.

Cookery lessons, flower-arranging advice, photography tips, bird-watching, origami, foraging for fungi – it really doesn’t matter. Put a weekend package together, publicise it well in advance, and they’ll come flocking. What’s more, they will pay good money to flock.

(A colleague of mine, on a Caribbean cruise, was astonished to see posters proclaiming “scarf-tying demonstrations”; the venue was packed with punters apparently eager to learn new knots.)

Hospitality industry entrepreneurs need to look no farther then their local high street. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker can all bring a weekend away to life, and will probably be grateful for the extra revenue they will accrue – at what is a slow time of year for all of us.

It works the other way, too. Estate agents, nail technicians, plumbers and portrait artists should all be plying their wares and wisdom through local hotels, restaurants, cafes and bars.

Summertime, and the living is easy. However, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that in six months’ time it will be a very different story.

Plan ahead now – in co-operation with your local business partners – and January and February may truly turn out to be a winter wonderland.

In recent years, the tourism and hospitality has developed a nasty and frankly pointless habit of introducing – or attempting to introduce – new words into the English language.

“Staycation” is the prime example. Rather than go abroad, we “stay” in the UK for a “vacation”. Company travellers who tag a few days’ sightseeing onto the end of a business trip are said to be taking a “bleisure” break.

A third example, beloved by international hotel chains, is “glocal”. They may have “global reach” (the posh term for “lots of hotels around the world”) but they incorporate “local” touches by serving enchiladas in Acapulco, pasta in Pisa, and bratwurst in Berlin.

The first is totally unnecessary – there’s nothing wrong with “domestic holiday”. The second, mercifully, has signally failed to catch on. The third, however, does bear closer examination – but only if you turn it on its head.

Most multinational companies feel the need to stress their affinity with their locality. Conversely, “local” companies need to emphasise their universal appeal. Dorset, I believe, is missing a trick.

On a recent visit to London, I discovered by pure chance a delightful little pub within casual strolling distance of Waterloo station. The selection of beers and wines was excellent, and the lunch menu was more than a cut above the usual mass-catered, micro-waved mundane mush. The service was outstanding.

The hostelry is run by a well-known and well-respected Dorset brewery, but nowhere did I see any reference to the company’s roots. Nice pub, nice food, nice people, but nowhere did it shout “Dorset”.

I suppose I should stress that this is not a criticism, merely an observation. The pub in question was packed with overseas tourists, all of whom appeared to be enjoying themselves.

Had they known that there are dozens of similarly wonderful watering-holes, just a couple of hours away, at least some of them might have been tempted south for more of the same.

“Glocal” is all about global companies striving to enhance their appeal by incorporating some quirky element into their otherwise ubiquitous, standardised, humdrum one-size-fits-all offering.

The reverse needs to be true. Dorset companies, whether they are breweries, or butchers, or bakers, or candlestick-makers, need to trumpet their geographic origins. It’s worked for Dorset Cereals, in the same way that it has worked for Worcester sauce, Dundee cake and Stilton cheese.

The term “glocal” is used by companies whose products and services are so bland that their marketing people desperately need to inject an element of originality, of differentiation.

Local companies – whether they’re in the tourism and hospitality sector or not – already have those elements, and need to capitalise upon them.

“Made in Dorset” needs to be a kitemark of quality.

Editor’s note: For further information, please contact Simon Scarborough on 07801 571357 or at simon@simonscarboroughassociates.co.uk.

I am ashamed to admit that it was only recently that I discovered the existence of a Dorset flag – a daffodil-yellow ground superimposed by a white cross bordered with scarlet.

The Dorset Cross, also known as St Wite’s Cross, apparently won county-wide approval in September 2008, after 2,086 people out of 4,000 voters bothered to give the standard their official blessing.

First and foremost, I would humbly submit that 2,086 votes out of a county-wide population of more than 750,000 (more than 80 per cent of whom are of voting age) can hardly be described as a thumping majority.

However, the fact that the flag exists at all raises interesting questions about “branding” in general. Flags are an emblem of common interest – England football fans draped in the cross of St George, the stars and stripes representing the federation of the 50 United States, and so on.

Brands are similarly emblematic. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, KFC – all have distinctive brands that say, in old-time computer language, “wysiwyg” or “what you see is what you get”. Brands tell consumers what they can expect.

More importantly, perhaps, they tell consumers what they cannot expect. No-one goes into a Burger King outlet and asks for a lasagne, let alone a rib-eye steak. No-one goes in to Yo! Sushi and orders a steak pie.

Back in the 1950s, a chap calls Kemmons Wilson took his family on a road-trip across the USA. He was so horrified by the lack of consistent standards offered by the roadside motels of the day, that he opened his own hotel – just outside Memphis, Tennessee, since you ask – and established the Holiday Inn chain.

As of last month, there are somewhere in the region of 1,160 Holiday Inns around the world and, like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and the rest, they’re all much of a much-ness – a burger in Miami is the same as a burger in Moscow, a hotel room in Sydney is basically the same as one in Cincinnati or Sao Paulo.
There’s nothing essentially wrong with Pizza Hut, or Holiday Inn, or any of the others – Costa Coffee, Harvester Inns, whoever. They’re very good at what they do, and they do what they do to the same, consistent standard, and they have an exceptionally loyal customer base.

Where they fail, and fail dismally, is in encouraging entrepreneurship. It’s relatively easy to become a Mr Minit key-cutter or ProntoPrint photocopier, but you’re never going to become a better key-cutter or photocopier unless you shrug off that brand, move out on your own, and do something different.

A “brand” is only as good as the product it represents. Mercedes cars aren’t good because they’re called Mercedes, they’re good because they’re fantastic cars. Parker pens aren’t good because they called Parker, they’re good because they’re fantastic pens.

Fly the Dorset flag all you like, but that won’t drive up revenues. Belonging to a brand – following a flag – is a recipe for anonymity. Make Kemmons Wilson spin in his grave – be different!

With weeks still to go before the General Election, a positive plethora of politicians, actual and wannabe, has been queuing up to share soundbites on the subject of youth employment. Quite rightly so – it’s worthy of attention at the very highest level, but it is also an issue that tends to be fundamentally misunderstood.

Young people entering the jobs market for the first time – whether they have a Masters degree in astrophysics or nothing more than a badge that proves that they can doggy-paddle their way across the local baths – lack two essential ingredients for success.

The first, obviously, is experience. They may know how to work a lathe, mix a martini, or plaster a ceiling, but they’ve rarely if ever had to do it in what we old-timers call “a commercial environment” – the real world.

The second shortcoming, which stems from the first, is customer care. Most young people tend to mix with other young people, with whom they generally discuss other, slightly more famous, young people.

They talk of Beyoncé and Benedict Cumberbatch, Jay-Z and J-Lo, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West. For the most part, they’ve never even heard of the Barbaras Streisand or Windsor, or the Williams Shatner and Shakespeare.

Put these young people into daily contact with even-slightly-older customers (more experienced, more discerning and with more money to spend) and there is, often, what is known in today’s parlance as a “disconnect”.

I’m not suggesting for one minute that school-leavers and graduates should be put through a crash course on the Harolds Wilson or Steptoe, or that they should bone up on the Falklands War or fracking, but I would advocate customer care training that teaches younger people how to communicate with those of more advanced years.

Although I am, and will always be, an ardent advocate of the commercial benefits of “customer care”, they are always predicated on “customer relationships”. Care is something you “do” to someone else; relationship is something you “share” with someone else.

Walk into your local bar. Do they bid you “good evening, how can I help?”, or do they head straight for the Argentinian Malbec with a cheery “large or small tonight”? The first is customer care; the second is a relationship.

To some customer-facing staff – whether they work in a butcher’s, baker’s or candlestick-maker’s – it comes naturally. To many, and perhaps most, their nascent sociability needs nurturing and developing.

It’s a differentiator, and it pays dividends in terms of repeat business. Those of us with a bit of experience in the “real world” know that already (if we didn’t, we’d have gone out of business long ago). New entrants may have the aptitude, but do they have the attitude?

Pre-election politicians are very keen on training youngsters for work. All too often, they miss the fundamental truth – qualifications are important; but customers are crucial.

By Simon Scarborough, Simon Scarborough Associates

Editor’s note: For further information, please contact Simon Scarborough on 07801 571357 or at simon@simonscarboroughassociates.co.uk.

Hospitality industry consultant Simon Scarborough, a former manager of the 802-room Tower Thistle and general manager of the Flemings Hotel in London’s Mayfair, suggests travel buyers have work to do.

“Hotel pricing policies are all about supply and demand, and while the supply side is more or less fixed, there is plenty of scope for flexibility on the demand side,” he suggests.

“The wage bill for business travellers on £50,000 a year is roughly £25 an hour, and while they might prefer to stay as close as possible to their ultimate destination, in terms of the total cost of a trip, that may not always make financial sense.

“Add the extra travel cost to the value of his or her time, and if the out-of-town property still works out cheaper, the old ‘location, location, location’ argument falls flat on its face.”