Fire Webinar – Fire Doors 2

• This Webinar is to help try and provide further clarity on Fire Doors. We will be welcoming back the leading expert on Fire Doors, Steve Emery, as well as Paul Bray, the PASC UK retained Fire Expert. It supplements the previous Fire Doors webinar.

• During the Webinar Historic doors, ledge and brace doors, nominal and notional fire doors are all covered, as well as running through some example floor plans to help owners determine where Fire Doors may or may not be required. There is a recorded Q&A at the end.

Interview Regarding the Registration Scheme in England

• COn the 24th October the Hospitality and Tourism APPG (All Party parliamentary Group) Chaired by Simon Jupp MP, and with Secretariat provided by UK  Hospitality met to hear evidence regarding a Statutory Registration Scheme for England in Westminster. Post the meeting PASc UK Chair Alistair Handyside, was interviewed by Martin Oates of the BBC about the proposed Registration Scheme.

Fire Webinar Five

• This fire webinar is applicable to anyone who has a self-catering business. From the 1st October 2023 everyone who lets even a room must have a written Fire Risk Assessment by law. Fire Risk Assessments should follow the Government Guidance provided by the Home Office.

• This webinar covers….. what has changed, what this means to you as a business, how you can find all the necessary free information to help you complete your Fire Risk Assessment and much more. This webinar was followed by a Q&A Session.

Fire Webinar Four

• This fire webinar is applicable to anyone who has a self-catering business. From the 1st October 2023 everyone who lets even a room must have a written Fire Risk Assessment by law. Fire Risk Assessments should follow the Government Guidance provided by the Home Office.

• This webinar covers….. what has changed, what this means to you as a business, how you can find all the necessary free information to help you complete your Fire Risk Assessment and much more. This webinar was followed by a Q&A Session.

Fire Webinar Three

• The keynote Speaker is Matthew Armer, who heads up Fire Policy at the Home Office. Matthew provide us with an update on what the changes are and the impact that they are having on doing Fire Risk Assessments, which will become law for all in England and Wales on 1 October 2023.

  The webinar also introduces Property Care, who have an inexpensive app, simple and easy to set up, that will enable property owners to maintain an ongoing log of the safety checks necessary to comply with the Fire Regs.

Fire Webinar Two

We have Steve Emery as our Keynote Speaker for this one, and he will be covering fire Safety in older buildings and will then move on to cover various aspects of fire doors. Steve’s background is comprehensive and includes:

• 15 years operational experience with Avon Fire and Rescue Service
• 12 years as the fire safety officer for the City of Bath
• 15 years as the fire officer for English Heritage and Historic England 
• 6 years as the fire officer for the University of Oxford
• Now director of the Heritage Fire Consultancy Limited, advising on fire doors, and fire resistance of elements of structure. Clients include Landmark Trust, National Trust and Palace of Westminster.

Fire Webinar One

This webinar features a Keynote presentation from Bob Bantock, who is responsible for all the National Trust properties and how he will be meeting the challenge of getting them compliant, followed by Yusuf Muhammad from Plumis limited, leaders in Misting solutions, particularly interesting for open plan properties and Dave Richmond from AICO Ltd, leaders in linked Fire Detection systems.

This is followed by a Q&A with the panellists, where they are joined by Paul Bray, the PASC UK retained Fire expert.

Thinking of Selling Your Business

This is an update on the previous webinar on the subject and will come from a both a marketing and financial approach, with an accountancy firm giving their take on what potential steps you may take.

EV Charging & Tech Webinar

The EV Charging paper 2023 is on the reports section of the website and would be a useful read before viewing the webinar so that you can prepare any questions.

This was launched in conjunction with the new EV Charging Paper 2023 and there is an offer from Voltshare in the 20th June 2023 newsletter.

Members Webinar covering the changes to Fire Guidance

This webinar was broadcast in support of the new fire support papers that we have published, see Fire update in the Newsletter from 6th June 2023.

The supporting papers can be found here:

https://www.pascuk.co.uk/fire_checks_and_safety/

Paper 1: The Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order 2005

This is a background paper explaining the legal background of the Fire Regs and the Fire Regs.

Paper 2: Additional Notes to the Home Office Guidance on Making your small paying guest accommodation safe from fire 2023

This paper provides additional notes to use ion conjunction with the Home Office Guidance on Making your small paying guest accommodation safe from fire paper.

Paper 3: Applying the Sleeping Risk Guide to existing holiday accommodation

This paper provides the first paper on providing additional information for larger properties.

PASC UK Buying Club for Members Webinar

We pulled together content for this Meeting which includes:

• New Member Benefits
• Update on Energy Buying Club
• And much more

Owner Cancellation Cover from

Cancelcover

Note: Cancel Cover is currently only available to property owners on both the SuperControl and Premier Cottages Platforms. This is a decision taken by SuperControl.

Some of you may be aware of the Cancel Cover policy, (initially launched exclusively to Premier Cottages members in 2021), which offers protection to owners in the event of guest cancellation if they cancel from 60 days up to 2 days before arrival. This is NOT the same as guest insurance but is protection for your business in the event of a cancellation. Even if you take up a policy like this we still suggest that you strongly encourage guests to take out their own travel insurance, we all know that take-up by guests for UK travel is low, which can lead to difficult conversations when a guest has to cancel, and expects you to take the hit.

NB. Under the Cancel Cover policy, If a guest cancels more than 60 days prior to arrival, then you get the premium reimbursed (as you aren’t in cover, and are more likely to get a replacement booking more than 2 months out).

This product was created to fill a gap after the MasterCancel policy offered by SuperControl was suspended during Covid. Cancel Cover is now fully integrated into SuperControl, so the process is very straightforward. Currently the full integration is just with the SuperControl platform.

Apart from the revenue protection it gives your business, it also offers a good marketing hook, as you can compete with the “free cancellation” terms offered by the OTAs. In a tough market, this may be a useful additional tool for securing bookings, as well as protecting your revenue in the event of cancellations.

More details about Cancel Cover here: https://policypowerhouse.com/cancelcover/

Touch Stay Boot Camp

Touch Stay has been proven to be one of the best digital tools available to self-caterers. Winner of the PASC UK 2021 Product of the Year, this meeting will be a Boot Camp to help provide users of Touch Stay to get more out of it, with users sharing tips and idea, and Andy McNulty showing off some of the features that you may not have discovered yet.

How Becoming an Accessible Business

can Boost Bookings

The Accessible market in the UK is substantial, and few owners focus on this area. This webinar brings together the data on the size of the market, and steps that you can take to be able to offer this as a selling point of your business.

Ross Calladine leads on Access at Visit England, Annette Burgess is a recognised access expert in Hospitality and both Diane and Cheryl run award winning accessible accommodation and are able to share their tips on how to either enter or improve your offer to serve this market.

General Meeting on Setting Prices

This webinar covers various strategies to help with setting your pricing going forwards. We have pulled together a panel of experts to guide you through these.

Open Webinar to Update Self-Catering in Wales

This webinar covers all the various interventions that the Welsh Government has introduced this year, including the 182-day rule, Tourism Levy, changes to how Business Rates are assessed and the recent fiasco penalising self-catering businesses for missing 70 days let during the pandemic restrictions.  We have brought together a panel to update you on what is happening, what is being done about it and what operators can do to help.

Statutory Registration in England Members Meeting

The Westminster Government has opened a ‘Call for Evidence’ on introducing a Statutory Registration Scheme in England. This could make it compulsory to have a Registration Number to advertise your property. Find out the pros and cons of such a scheme and what PASC UK will be providing to the Government.

This was a meeting format on zoom, where everyone could see everyone else and were able to ask questions directly to the panel.

Webinar on “What’s Wrong With My Website?”

The experts cover a whole range of aspects to look at to make sure your website is performing, from making sure it will appeal to your target market, what SEO is and what benefits it brings, the user journey, how the guest navigates through the site to the book now button, website checkers and much, much more…..

Legal Webinar covering Cancellation Policies and Terms & Conditions

This webinar covered the pros and cons of various cancellation policies applicable to self-catering, particularly with reference to cancellations resulting from guests catching Covid pre-stay and storm damage. The session also covers Terms and Conditions and Cookie Policies and why it is so important to get these right.

PASC UK Webinar on the benefits of joining the Buying Club

Gurvinder & Alistair run through the benefits of signing up for the buying club, which is free to members and answer some viewer questions.

PASC UK Webinar on Capturing More Bookings

A group of experts will each run through their top 5-6 tip to capturing last minute bookings, there will then be questions from the audience to the panellists.

Recording of PASC UK Webinar on Entering the Tourism Awards

This webinar covers the benefits of entering the Tourism Awards, how to enter them and top tips.

PASC UK Tech Webinar

This webinar showcased how technology can really help your self-catering business differentiate itself and thrive.  It featured the following products.

• Properly – This is a new app that enable you as owners to use an app to monitor your cleaning, generate reports on the cleaning and send reports to guests that their property is ready and inspected, with photos. Brought to you by Properly and Quality in Tourism, it integrates the PASC UK Covid Cleaning protocols alongside the high standards established by Quality in Tourism’s ‘Safe, Clean and Legal’ accreditation. The presentation will be from Richard Vaughton of Properly and Deborah Heather of Quality in Tourism. http://getproperly.com/

Legal Obligations of a Self-Catering Business

This webinar will provide a headline tour of the legal obligations that we are under running any form of short-term letting/self-catering business. Whilst covering the key points we will point out where information can be found as well as highlighting specific risks to insurance cover.

Pros and Cons of Self-catering Agents or Going Direct?

This webinar featured the pros and cons of both the self-catering agency route and of taking your bookings direct. Plus, it also features the Q&A on the Road Maps

Chargebacks

• Avoid them (why they occur, how to minimise the probability).
• Understand what they are, the variants, and what to expect.
• Be competent and efficient at dealing with them.
• Put a good case together to win a dispute.

Free Webinar on ‘Self-catering Futures, building a world class business”

We are poised to have a really busy summer this year, as most will not be able, or perhaps willing, to go abroad. What can we do with our businesses to win over these new customers long term?  How can we increase our repeat customers as we head towards a really competitive landscape in 2022/2023 when the international markets open up?

The Property Ghosting Webinar

This webinar will explain to holiday accommodation owners what ‘Ghosting’ is and how it harms their business. It will help owners learn how to identify if their property is being ghosted using self-catering examples, and what steps they can take to remedy this. We will also cover intellectual property, how to protect yours and how not to breach others intellectual property. We will end the presentations on guest review management which will be followed by a Q&A to the whole panel.

How to become an Accessible Business and Why?

Why should you consider getting involved in the Accessible market? Find out from a panel of experts about the market, what you can expect, what is the financial impact, what you need to do, and how to go about entering this sector. 

Key points to consider:

• Market worth £3.2 billion in overnight stays
• Make up 15% of overnight stays
• The guests spend more per night and stay longer

The team will present the market opportunity, the how to’s and the benefits, followed by a Q&A session to the whole panel.

Protecting the South West Tourism Sector from Cyber Crime

In 2020, 46% of businesses experienced a cyber-attack, and for those who lost cash the average was over £3,200. Increasingly, simple scams are being deployed, and it’s very possible to reduce your risk without being a technical expert. You just need to know where to start. 

On 18 March between 10-11, the South West Tourism Alliance will join the South West Business Council and the police-led South West Cyber Resilience Centre, in hosting a webinar which shows you how to make your business’s IT safer and keep it that way. We’ll show you a bit about what cybercrime looks like, and we’ll tell you how to access free resources for SME’s, from staff training to basic IT security. And if you want bespoke IT support and don’t know where to start, we’ll also show you how to access inexpensive services through new links with regional universities, or how to find a trustworthy company near you.

Touch Stay Free Webinar

Touch Stay have organised a webinar to share short term lettings successes during the pandemic.

Come meet, listen to and chat with four industry professionals who will share stories of happy guests and accommodation professionals during Covid.

• Hosting success stories
• Tips and tricks gleaned from different countries
• How their organizations supported their members during the pandemic crisis
• What can self-catering/vacation rental owners do to make 2021 a success and help 2022 sell itself