Hotels

Having just had two weeks off of work, I have stayed in three separate hotels in England from one end of the price spectrum to the other.

As someone who has travelled a lot, mostly on business, I would suggest all I, and most other people, what from an hotel is: clean bed, iron and ironing board, coffee/tea making facilities and fresh air.

Anything else is just hassle, but as optional extras I would add easy checking and checkout.

Now given that people who run hotels, run hotels, why is this so bloody difficult to do for some people in this country?

The first hotel I stayed in was the Waldorf Hilton (used to be the Astoria when it was frequented by film stars and royalty) and we stayed in a suite paid for by my daughter as a birthday gift.

The second was Premier Inn in York for two nights and the third a Holiday Inn in Stratford upon Avon.

Now I will be the first to admit that I present a problem to anyone selling to me or providing me with a service and that problem comes in two parts. First off I am scruffy and generally casually turned out. The problem that this presents to anyone who wears a suit or a uniform for a living is that they immediately take on a supercilious air and generally treat me like I am either stupid, poor or ought to be at the tradesman's entrance.

I am none of these things and I will repeat the cliché about books and covers etc.

One example of this recently harmed a hapless div at my local VW dealership. I wanted a new car and aimed to buy a VW Golf R32, so popped in with one of my daughters in tow and ambled up to the suited div and said that I'd like to buy a Golf. He quite literally looked me up and down, combat trousers, black trainers, polo shirt and said in a loud, chavvy and snobby way " you'll be wanting the 1.9 TDI! The brochures are over there" pointing.

"Actually" said I, "I wanted an R32, but don't put yourself out".

I walked out, went to another dealer who had the good sense to take me seriously and then my £28k. Four weeks later I went back to the first dealer with my R32, called the manager and the div together, took them outside and shared with them their loss.

Back to the Waldorf. First off, why do hotels in the UK employ men to open doors, it's mad and costly. The Premier Inn has automatic doors that open without any human intervention.

Do rich people have very weak arms, can they not carry their own luggage from the car to reception?

So I presented myself at reception to be scanned by a snobby little cow in a shiny uniform, who once she has ascertained I had come to stay and not rob the place, discovered I was staying in a suite. This is where the panic usually sets in. The suited uniformed snob discovers that this particularly shabbily covered book, contains within, some treasure.

At this point they shift from snobbish disdain to Basil Fawltyesque mealy-mouthed groveling. It both sickens me and makes me smile.

So the shiny uniformed snob then had to inform me that my suite was not quite ready but if I would please accompany them to the "executive club" there would be some world class brown nosing on offer as well as a selection of snacks and drinks.

Then we come to the room where the hotel almost insisted they send a flunky with me to show me how the room works. Well they can bugger off, I know how a room works, I have several of my own at home.

The room itself was lovely if somewhat impractical. The ironing board was built into the same cupboard that housed the coffee making area, both we so small as to be virtually useless. The ironing board was tiny, so small that my underpants filled the area allocated for ironing. The coffee making area was similarly so small; I relocated all of the stuff to the bathroom!

The best thing about the Waldorf was the bar. A very cool oasis of great service and common sense in a hotel that frankly is so far up it's own arse, it is muffled. Listen chaps, I have stayed at the George V, the Lanesborough and the Taj in Bombay as well as 41 in London. They are very cool hotels, yours is a Hilton! So to the bar, great atmosphere, great service and a French 75 for just £14. From there we went to Langan's for dinner and had the usual brilliant food, brilliant service and very reasonable prices. Anyone wishing to learn about great service, great food and a total lack of pretension, should study Langan's.

The following morning we come to the bit I hate most about staying in hotels, checking out. Why do they have to type so much, why does it all take so bloody long and why do they have to go through the elaborate routine of stapling by Amex receipt to the invoice, folding it, inserting it into an envelope and then presenting it to me like it's a bloody knighthood? It is not you idiots, it is a shitty bit of paper that you are trying to endow with some magical air to justify your own existence and the cost of the room being in excess of £350.

The second reason that I am hard to sell to or to provide a service for is that I am finely tuned to good or bad service and will not hesitate to pipe up if I feel ether has been provided. Praise appears to be OK, but offering constructive criticism about how a person may possibly do a better job is greeted with the same shock and horror I would expect if I had done a shit on the carpet.

So the next hotel at which we stayed, the Premier Inn on the outskirts of York.

This is the purple hotel chain that has employed the rather annoying Lenny Henry to front their advertising campaign with offers of rooms from £29.95.

First off, don’t let Lenny Henry put you off, these really are very good hotels with everything one needs from the clean bed to Internet access.

Second, the rooms are never that cheap, unless you book two years in advance and stay in Scunthorpe, they are just not. However, they will most usually be less than £100, which is not bad. If you want a thirty quid room, stay in Scunthorpe by all means, though having been the once I would not recommend it. Remember that saying, if Typhoo put the T in Britain, who put the c**t in Scunthorpe, very apt.

Premier Inn typically have doors that open by themselves, it generally takes less than a minute to book in and about the same to book out. Your invoice is emailed to you!!!! In a world of the cash rich and time poor, this is what I want and need from a hotel. In easily, comfortable stay in a bedroom that is clean and orderly and easy checkout. My wife reckons the toilet in such rooms always smells of piss, but I have very little sense of smell so that is not an issue for me.

In essence, a totally unpretentious hotel chain proving a very decent room, for a very decent price. I would personally recommend them to anyone - maybe except people with an exceptional sense of smell!

Finally we come to the last hotel, the Hilton in Stratford upon Avon.

Now we all know that the benchmark for craps hotels and hotel staff is the very funny and fictitious Fawlty Towers. Made funny by the owner and some of the staff - notably Manuel. Now in a TV programme it is funny that the staff and the guests can not communicate easily or at all effectively, if the Holiday Inn at Stratford it just isn't, it's bloody frustrating.

Now I know whey such hotels have to employ foreign nationals, it's because they are cheap and the English working class think that working in an hotel is beneath them, so they'd rather stay at home and sponge of the state - that's us by the way as there is no such thing as the state, it's just a neat way of stealing our money and giving it to idle bastards.

So, they have little choice but to employ foreign nationals, but I can tell them here and now that despite the low wages they most certainly pay these people, they are NOT cost effective, nor do they provide anything like good service.

At the bar, all I wanted was a beer and a wine. Now I have travelled a good portion of the world and have a tendency to articulate myself quite clearly and loudly. However, laddy boy behind the bar at the Holiday Inn at Stratford had such a poor command of the English language that quite literally I ended up ordering my drinks, which at a totally empty bar still took ten minutes, by a combination of pointing and shouting. It was a farce in every way.

Had Johnnie been able to do just a little English, it would have taken two minutes and I'd have been satisfied.

As it was, it took ten minutes and despite the fact that both my wife and I really did fancy another drink, we didn't bother and walked into town so that we could be patronised by some locals in a pub.

The hotel itself was run down and tatty, the room was OK in a run down and tatty kind of way and the bill reasonable.

In total, a place that I'd only stay at again if the local tramps had filled all of the park benches and I really did have no choice.

So three hotels, each with different aspirations, each with the same quite discerning client, and the only one I'd stay at again, and would do so willingly, would be the Premier Inn.

Hotels of the world, there is a bloody lesson in there somewhere if only you'd look.