Hotel Owner Hotel Owner July 2017 digital | Page 42

MILESTONES | NEIL KIRBY
can be done to improve their room and then
try and take their suggestions on board. You
have to be very customer-focused.
I have to say that a change in guests
over the past 50 years is that they have got
bigger. A regular cost is replacing broken
toilet seats because guests are too heavy.
I’ve had wash basins wrenched off the wall
when people have used them as leverage
to get up from the toilet, and have even had
to call the fire brigade to get guests out of
the shower when they have become stuck.
There is one advantage to the hotelier
though. The larger guests tend to eat and
drink a lot and so spend more money.
I think some guests can be less
you’re going to get the most out of them.
important for proprietors and managers to respectful too. They sometimes leave rooms
be seen by the customers and to talk to in a terrible mess, and often bring their own
industry and frequently have apprentices as many as possible. It makes them feel drinks in to save money at the bar. Because
at the hotel. I also go to local schools to special and they will come back. I frequently, of the culture we live in today, where
speak to students to motivate them. I have for example, go and have a cup of tea with people always want something for nothing,
often employed chefs and receptionists the chambermaids. It makes them feel guests can be more demanding. As a sea
who have initially been to the hotel on work appreciated and they realise that they front hotel in Eastbourne, we frequently
experience from college. Only recently I had are an essential cog in the machine. Just have guests who will book a lower cost
some young people on work experience and because their work is behind the scenes room at the back of the hotel but demand
the very next day one of the boys wrote doesn’t mean that they are any less an upgrade to a sea view room on arrival
to me and asked me for a job! I liked his important. The difference between being an without paying extra.
chutzpah, and maybe saw something of employee and a hotel owner is enormous, my younger self in him, so I gave him a job. I but because I started at the bottom rung of have had youngsters with Down’s Syndrome the ladder, I feel that I have more empathy from the community visiting us on work with the staff.
I like to bring young people into the
experience and I now employ a guy in his
More and more hotel chains mean that
thirties who is deaf. Nobody else would give a lot of modern hotels are a bit clinical and
him a job, but I didn’t see why deafness not as comfortable as they used to be. Beds
should have to be a barrier. Trainees are can often be too hard and too low. Invariably
also given experience of other departments they lack the personal touch. I was taught
too, not just the department that they’re design by Olga Polizzi (Sir Rocco Forte’s
working in. It helps to know how the whole sister and mother of TV’s Hotel Inspector
hotel works. It was how I learned and I like to Alex Polizzi) and when refurbishing a room
pass that on to others. I always think of the guests’ requirements.
Management has changed over the
So, for example, I make sure that electric
years as well. When I worked at Grosvenor sockets are at a reasonable height. No
House, the Forte family mixed with the more scrabbling behind a bed or chest
customers, and guests liked to see Lord of drawers to find one. Rooms now have
Forte walk through the hotel. Today, many phone chargers for mobiles. Controls for
hotel owners are anonymous and few the showers are designed so that guests
walk the floor. I think that is a retrograde can adjust them before they get into the
step. I walk 15,000 steps a day – I have shower, then there’s no chance of getting
a pedometer – and love to chat to the scalded or an icy shock. When designing a
customers rather than sit in the office. room, I consider what would I want if I were
On a day-to-day basis I think it is very
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a guest? I always ask customers if anything
July 2017