By Gillian McKenzie
SLTA and BII Scotland form ‘mutually beneficial’ partnership
The two trade groups signed a memorandum of agreement at the SLTA AGM in Stirling last week to launch the closer working partnership between the organisations.
Following the signing of the agreement, the groups staged a national training seminar, which heard from SLTA chief executive Paul Waterson, SLTA chairman of the year Peter Lederer, BII chief executive Tim Hulme, BII Scotland chairman Stephen McGowan and Gayle Johnstone of Tennent’s Training Academy.
BII Scotland chair Stephen McGowan said the agreement will benefit the trade.
“I’m obviously delighted that BII Scotland and the SLTA will be working more closely to deliver high quality training to responsible licensed trade operators,” he told SLTN.
Paul Waterson said the partnership will bring mutual benefits. “It means we will share intelligence and political information and our training will be done through BII with Tennent’s Training Academy,” he told SLTN.
“One call to our office will get people’s training organised.”
The importance of meeting the deadlines for personal licence holder refresher training was underlined by Waterson in his speech at the AGM.
He also highlighted the political work undertaken by the SLTA in the past year, at local, national, UK and European levels.
And Waterson spoke about the success of the Scotland’s Pubs and Bars – A Story to Tell campaign, which the SLTA is running in conjunction with Diageo, Tennent’s and VisitScotland.
Under the pubs tourism initiative, 120 premises from across Scotland will share their ‘stories’ with visitors on a new website and app; a nominated ‘storyteller’ from each premises will gain a place on a specially-tailored customer care training course based around the initiative at Tennent’s Training Academy. And the new SLTN Story to Tell Award will recognise the pub which has best embraced and promoted the concept to visitors.
Waterson said the scheme highlights the important role pubs play in Scottish tourism.
“I know that many of the premises involved in the campaign do so looking at new opportunities in the visitor market – a market that they perceived for years as not being for them,” he said.
“However, thanks to the strong relationship we now have with VisitScotland, we are changing this round.
“The truth is that our trade has a significant role to play in the tourism business.”
