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The Hotel: Is British hospitality really that bad?
Is the standard of service in British hotels as woeful as the reality television show The Hotel suggests, or should the ghost of Basil Fawlty finally be laid to rest?
Contemplate the state of service in British hotels and, even after all these years, scenes from Fawlty Towers inevitably flash before your eyes. Indeed, the Fawlty word has become synonymous with any hotel where the service is erratic. Not for nothing is the current series of Channel 4’s The Hotel set in Basil Fawlty’s own Torquay.
But is it fair to continue to tar British hotels with the Fawlty brush? The answer is no: a more professional attitude now pervades across the board and standards have definitely risen. On the downside, the colourful characters whose privately owned, personally run, highly individual establishments once dominated the hotel scene are on the wane as profit margins, branding, groups and chains become ever more the norm and men in suits, not cravats, make all the decisions.
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| A room at The Cavendish, the hotel featured in Channel 4's The Hotel |
Though it’s by no means impossible, it becomes harder with every passing year to find hotel service that is not merely efficient, but also characterful, genuine and warm. For all the training courses, goals and directives now in place, nothing can beat service with a smile that comes with a genuine enthusiasm for, and interest in, the job.
And there lies the problem. It’s not that British service is bad – it’s just that so much of it is lacklustre and lacking in heart because so many of the two million plus people employed in the hospitality industry consider it unfit as a career. ‘As a result’, says Fred Sireix, GM of Galvin at Windows in the London Hilton and co-host of BBC 2’s Michel Roux’s Service, ‘Britain hasn’t established it as an art’.
On the continent, in the Far East and in America, employment in hospitality is regarded far more favourably and it is often not the British, but émigrées such as Fred Sireix and Diego Masciagna, GM of the Waterside Inn in Bray, who throw themselves with passion into the business of training and inspiring a new generation in the art of service.
Walk into a hotel where the majority of staff are long serving and happy in their work and then walk into one where the majority of staff are merely passing through, some with not much more than a nodding acquaintance with the English language, and the crux of the problem becomes immediately apparent.
The first hotel will have depth, rhythm and genuineness. The second will, in all probability, fail to engage you. As a generalization, large, busy establishments (with the exception of our luxury hotels, which are in the main beautifully run) and ones in quiet rural areas where it’s hard to recruit) are most prone to poor service.
What do we look for in hotel service? Efficiency and just the right degree of interaction.
So don’t call me ‘mate’ the whole time because you are a Kiwi (a hotel in Scotland this year); don’t make me have to act out the word ‘mustard’ because you don’t speak sufficient English (Cumbria); don’t make me order breakfast via an app because you think gadgets are the answer (Bath); come up with a greeting other than ‘did you have a good journey’ (everywhere); don’t call out ‘housekeeping’ three times just as I’ve got into the bath (everywhere); don’t decant the Marmite (Devon; every Brit is happy to eat it from the jar); do offer to carry my bag, however many bags you’ve carried that day; and please, give us a smile.
And there lies the problem. It’s not that British service is bad – it’s just that so much of it is lacklustre and lacking in heart because so many of the two million plus people employed in the hospitality industry consider it unfit as a career. ‘As a result’, says Fred Sireix, GM of Galvin at Windows in the London Hilton and co-host of BBC 2’s Michel Roux’s Service, ‘Britain hasn’t established it as an art’.
On the continent, in the Far East and in America, employment in hospitality is regarded far more favourably and it is often not the British, but émigrées such as Fred Sireix and Diego Masciagna, GM of the Waterside Inn in Bray, who throw themselves with passion into the business of training and inspiring a new generation in the art of service.
Walk into a hotel where the majority of staff are long serving and happy in their work and then walk into one where the majority of staff are merely passing through, some with not much more than a nodding acquaintance with the English language, and the crux of the problem becomes immediately apparent.
The first hotel will have depth, rhythm and genuineness. The second will, in all probability, fail to engage you. As a generalization, large, busy establishments (with the exception of our luxury hotels, which are in the main beautifully run) and ones in quiet rural areas where it’s hard to recruit) are most prone to poor service.
What do we look for in hotel service? Efficiency and just the right degree of interaction.
So don’t call me ‘mate’ the whole time because you are a Kiwi (a hotel in Scotland this year); don’t make me have to act out the word ‘mustard’ because you don’t speak sufficient English (Cumbria); don’t make me order breakfast via an app because you think gadgets are the answer (Bath); come up with a greeting other than ‘did you have a good journey’ (everywhere); don’t call out ‘housekeeping’ three times just as I’ve got into the bath (everywhere); don’t decant the Marmite (Devon; every Brit is happy to eat it from the jar); do offer to carry my bag, however many bags you’ve carried that day; and please, give us a smile.
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