Tourists are paying for the ‘customer experience’ – what ‘customer experience’?

Fáilte Ireland commissioned research last year which examined customer service expectations among overseas and domestic holidaymakers. The results prove worthy of contemplation.

According to Fáilte Ireland’s analysis, “Ireland has a sufficiently developed reputation as a holiday destination to lead most holidaymakers to expect that customer service standards will be at a generally good level.
“Expectations can differ depending on location within Ireland with expectations of Dublin as a modern European city likely to be framed by experiences in other Euorpean capitals wereas expectations around customer service can be more constrained for those areas outside Dublin.”
Typically, these expectations focus around a customer service presentation that will be homely, clean and welcoming rather than pristine and professional. But there’s a strong sense that values around care and local pride will infuse that customer service.
However as Fáilte Ireland points out, “The ultimate customer experience can be diluted somewhat by the growing predominance of customer-facing foreign staff who can lack the commitment, depth of local knowledge and fundamental wherewithal to deliver the ulitmate customer service expereince.  A clear need exists for appropriate and formal training progammes for foreign nationals entering the Irish service sector, to incorporate a basic language coaching module”.
As Aidan Pender, Fáilte Ireland’s Director of Policy & Industry Development, points out, the trends indicated in the research point to a worrying disjoint between the expectations of customer service on the part of visitor as they anticipate their holiday break in Ireland and the reality of that customer service as those same vistors reflect on their experience at the end of their holiday.
“This disjoint is most acute among overseas visitors for whom an expectation of an authentic interaction with local Irish people remains a central element in their holiday planning”.
He also alludes to “an apparent reluctance on the part of front-line staff to open up to vistors in a warm and friendly way that enriches the customer service experience”.
The report leaves one wondering just how much things have changed in Ireland over the past 20 years – and to what extent the ‘old’ Ireland has become a real thing of the past outside the major conurbations which do not appear to qualify in the first place?
But this is not to say that the situation cannot be taken in hand and improved. The ‘real’ Ireland is still there for visitors enquiring in the right local pubs and hotels. The problem is that the new generation of staff – both national and non-national – are not ‘naturally’ aware of it. They were not brought up around it.
And so in order to meet this need, Fáilte Ireland has developed a new customer care programme for frontline staff. It can be delivered on-site. It’s short and to-the-point.
A pilot schme run in Shannon hotels last year demonstrated that the course is meeting a real industry need. Encouraged by that result, Fáilte Ireland is now developing further training initiatives to promote and support the quality of the customer experience.
While it may appear sad that such ‘local knowledge’ and ‘local welcome’ has to be ‘taught’, it’s a sign of the international times we live in that such knowledge is no longer ‘naturally’ acquired. But this is no reason for proprietors not to ensure that their staff – national or non-national – are not made aware of the reasons why tourists choose Ireland as a holiday destination and to have them adapt their ‘welcome’ accordingly.

 

Let’s get the facts

Back in October a little-noticed article about the origin of safe alcohol consumption limits appeared in The Times of London. It suggested that the notion of 21 units for men and 14 for women was a complete fantasy figure. The original figures had been drawn from thin air – or “plucked out of the air” as it was actually put by Richard Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal and a member of the Royal College of Physicians Working Party responsible for introducing the initial guidelines, guidelines that we’ve followed so slavishly ever since.
The 1987 guidelines arose, it seems, from a feeling that “you had to say something” since the Working Party’s epidemiologist believed that “it’s impossible to say what’s safe and what isn’t” in the absence of reliable data.
And reliable data was not available at that time.
Richard Smith told The Times, “Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee”.
But let’s face it, intelligent guesswork is no more than that: guesswork.
However it seems that subsequent recommendations – somewhat more informed recommendations – to raise these ‘safe limits’ from evidence derived from subsequent studies were simply ignored.
For example such a subsequent study found that men drinking between 21 and 30 units of alcohol a week had the lowest mortality rates in the UK. Another found that a man would have to drink 63 units a week or a bottle of wine a day to face the same risk of death as a teetotaller.
So what does this mean for all the subsequent assessments of public health and those at risk from alcohol misuse over the 20 intervening years?
Are those drinking more than the recommended limits really at ‘significant risk’ here or do we need to take another look at every aspect of alcohol misuse, not just those that suit a particular lobby at a particular time?
May we here at Drinks Industry Ireland offer all our readers a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year…

 

Food Safety in Pubs increasingly monitored

Pat Nolan, Editor of Drinks Industry Ireland recently spoke with the Chief Executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland Dr John O’Brien about the increasing role of the FSAI in the licensed trade’s growing pub food offering. Read the interview in full

 

What is it about the restless innovator?

By: Pat Nolan, Editor, Drinks Industry Ireland

The restless innovator is not content with making a fortune in one walk of life but has to go on and start all over again in another. Through gritted-teeth perseverence and by gripping that learning curve ever more tightly when failure comes around the first few times, the restless innovator goes on to make a thorough success of the second choice of career too. Makes ya sick!

And so it is with a number of winemakers in the Bordeaux region where fate appears to have plucked them from the vine in one walk of life to introduce them instead into the wonders of wine-making, imbuing them with a seemingly restless vigour and passion for making good wine – and with considerable skill and attention to detail to boot.

Martin Krajewski represents just such a person. He bought Chateau de Sours 10 years ago after a life in the City of London. Martin commenced a major upgrade of the winery with the purchase of new vineyards and the restoration of the Chateau and its grounds, replete with striking art gallery and equally striking underground cavern.
Having overcome many difficulties in getting the vineyard at Chateau de Sours up to

 

Not a cider sunset yet

If everything in life was fair Elvis would still be alive and his impersonators would be dead but life’s not like that, I know.

Even so, it has been something of a downer to witness the true extent of our abysmal summer weather as C&C – last year’s ‘most likely to’ in the UK’s long drinks category – fails to follow through on its initial magnificent success over there judging by second quarter sales.

In truth, the company could not have done much more than it did and while C&C may have been taken by surprise by Scottish & Newcastle’s robust marketing response to its initial onslaught into the cider market there, this again highlights the dangers of taking too seasonal-an-approach to the product.

Sales of C&C brand Magners Cider in the UK have fallen by around 45 per cent year-on-year to July 2007.

Bad weather and heightened competition have been blamed for the reverse in the cider brand’s fortunes which led to the issuing of two profit warnings and an announcement of 70 temporary layoffs in Clonmel.

A knock-on effect into August is anticipated as ‘seasoned drinkers’ and new converts to cider-drinking alike continue to reduce their initial intake levels.

The Bulmers brand is owned by Scottish & Newcastle in the UK which has put a heavyweight marketing campaign behind its product in response to the growth of cider drinking there, championed originally by C&C with Magners.

And the trouble doesn’t end there. Reports have appeared indicating that Tesco will be putting cans of Magners on special offer here in Ireland in a ‘three for two’ deal. Tesco has been able to pick up ‘overs’ from the UK at greatly reduced prices, it’s believed.

The recent downturn in Magners’ fortunes this Summer has been described as a ‘four month blip’ by a spokeswoman for C&C.

But it does hammer home the fact that like Baileys – which was only too aware of its seasonal shortcomings and did something about it – any brand that depends too heavily on seasonality will come a cropper now and again.

But knowing C&C and having seen how hard it has worked on and invested in its hugely successful Bulmers brand here and this brand in the UK, we needn’t look to sunset in the orchards of Clonmel quite yet.

 

(Don’t) take a chance on pub food?

I recently attended a Dubliner magazine debate on food at which an expert panel including Kevin Thornton (Thornton’s), Ross Lewis (Chapter 1), Ernie Whalley (ex Editor of Food & Wine magazine), Helen Lucy Burke (well, Helen Lucy Burke), Eoin Higgins (Sunday Tribune foodie) and Asheesh Dewan of the Jaipur Indian restaurant chain, referred to pub food during the course of the discussion.
However they quickly dismissed pub food as being ‘non-existent’ in terms of quality.
“Is there such a thing as a Gastro Pub in Ireland?” they asked.
– “We don’t think so, pubs can’t cook” they answered themselves before quickly moving on…. I was disappointed to hear this as I don’t necessarily agree. One of our industry reports this month deals with a survey of food in Dublin pubs. Look around at the successful competition. Stylish venues and cocktail bars have become a noticable feature of the pub trade purely as a result of the more demanding customer emphasising the importance of having high standards. Bar food follows suit.
But God is in the detail of the overall offering and it’s surprising how frequently one can enter an establishement and have to wait at a table piled with empty glasses and used plates to ‘enjoy’ the dubious pleasers of overcooke, over priced food. Frequently I’ve adopted the role of clearer-up and collected these and landed them on the counter out of pure frustration. That’s on the rare occasion that I haven’t already left the place.
So how’s your food operation really doing? If you don’t know, you can do one of two things. You can send in a couple of people to assess your outlet’s strengths and weaknesses via a mystery visit or you can print up comment cards and try to ensure they’re used by offering some kind of incentive (it’s cheaper than hiring the services of a research company). It’s amazing the feedback this can generate. But is anyone out there listening?
While there are quite a few pubs doing a great job in promoting good quality pub food, contrary to the widely held belief as posited by the panel, sadly to my mind they find themselves in a minority when put alongside the truly terrible chancers still out there.

 

From Glastonbury to Finland(ia)

Glastonbury wasn’t the only venue celebrating the Summer Solstice. Renards nightclub in Dublin didn’t let the occasion pass without colourful comment in the form of a Finlandia Midnight Sun party recently.

Conditions here were a hell of a lot more comfortable than those at Glastonbury – we were indoors for a start – and there was little mud but much merriment with a full house of specially-invited guests sampling a range of Finlandia cocktails throughout the evening.
In keeping with last year’s Finlandia celebration, something had to change on the hour every hour and this year it was the range of Finlandia cocktails on offer as opposed to the lighting.
But above and beyond all this, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise in this day and age to be asked for a non-alcoholic cocktail at such an event.
Yet initial requests by yours-truly for a non-alcoholic cocktail were met with blank stares from the bar until champion cocktail barman Paul Heffernan heard of my plight and quickly took over, mixing up a tasty delight for this driver.

Current Finlandia Vodka Cup Champion Paul Lambert was there as was Darren Geraghty of Kudos Bar, Clarion Hotel, Liffey Valley and others in the licensed trade such as Geoff Morrissey and Marc McLoughlin from the In Bar in Dalkey and Johnnie Karagiannis from the Morrison Hotel as well as Morzena Twavdziszewski from Sweeney’s Off-licence in Glasnevin, Dublin and Pietro Stoccoro, Bar Manager at the G Hotel in Galway.
Renards itself was nearly unrecognisable, caped as it was in a blanket of Finlandian synthetic snow and ice. Not only that, but the cocktails went down a treat.
Made from barley, Finlandia Vodka pre-dates Absolut (which actually followed on the success of Finlandia) but considering the nature of the product and where it comes from – The Land of the Midnight Sun and all that – shouldn’t Finlandia consider repeating the experience during the Winter solstice?
What better winter warmer could one wish for? At least we’d be in seasonal mood, I thought, as we reluctantly made our exit through the assorted white robed fire breathers, jugglers and nymphs back onto Setanta Place and the warm summer downpour that had gone on all day…..

 

Cassidy’s celebrate an almost exact 30th

When Cassidy Wines booked into the Westbury Hotel, Dublin, to celebrate its 30th anniversary with a dinner for its suppliers and its guests, the company could hardly have timed it better. The booking date turned out to be very nearly true to the exact day that the company was incorporated in May 1977.
A portfolio tasting had already taken place earlier in the afternoon which witnessed 20 principals flying in from as far afield as Chile to show their wines. At the dinner later that evening, Cassidy Wines Managing Director Niel Cassidy told the 100 guests who’d arrived to break bread with the company that it had been Niels father Kevin who started off the whole thing when he began importing wine from Italy. This followed Kevin’s picking up on dark mutterings that there was no decent Italian wine in Ireland back then.

 

Silver Hill Foods gets another first

It’s quite a mantle of responsibility to be carrying for 45 years but I have to hand it to Silver Hill Foods (and the Steele Family behind the Silver Hill company) which recently celebrated 45 years as Europe’s only hand-produced premium quality duck company at the higher end of the market. Silver Hill Foods’ name travels. 80 per cent of its product is exported to England, France and Europe in general.

That’s why the serious food publican should take another look at this company. These products could lift the menu excitement quotient quite considerably. Best of all, these products come delivered oven-ready fresh or  frozen – the choice is the publican’s.

 

Kilbeggan celebrates 250th

This year the Old Kilbeggan Distillery, now rejuvenated and once again distilling, celebrates its 250th Anniversary. As part of the celebrations owners Cooley Distillery plc invited an ‘intimate’ international gathering to the distillery recently to celebrate the Anniversary and catch up on developments including the new whiskeys.

To cap it all, a candlelit dinner was held in the Old Kilbeggan Distillery following an afternoon of tastings and tours. 

International guests were treated to a menu first served on the 16th May 1907 at the retirement banquet of one Michael J Jennings, the US importer for the Kilbeggan Distillery prior to prohibition.

Each dish from this unique and historical menu was paired with a whiskey from Cooley’s award-winning range.

But for single malt afficianados, the best was yet to come and consisted of Cooley Chairman John Teeling offering each and every guest a tot of pot still whiskey dating all the way back to 1944 which was found on the site when it was originally purchased by Cooley.

The strong turnout of Northern European whiskey journalists and whiskey retailers certainly had a night to remember.