Tourism Awards Ceremony Looms

Thanks to all our Gymnasts from Garstang, York and the Diamonds club from Halifax.

I didn't see them before they left as we were busy with family matters last weekend but I hope their achievements matched their expectations.

Wednesday sees the Isle of Man Tourism Awards take place at the Mount Murray Hotel, so the nerves have begun to jangle a little as we hope to retain our title from last year of 'Best Hotel.'

As the winter weather takes hold, personally, I'm looking forward to our Christmas break but we still have large table vacancies 2nd & 3rd December as well as plenty of midweek space.

JCB - Stick To What You Are Good At!

If only we could have had weather like today in July a bit more often or during the Commonwealth Youth Games!

It's probably dangerous to say and I'll expect all sorts of opprobium to land on my head if it takes a turn for the worse but I would like to thank the IOM Government very much for buying a 'Salt Mountain' to fight the winter ice.

Unfortunately, I can't take a photograph of the wonderful view from the Hotel, as my new telephone is a throwback to the stoneage. If anyone out there is thinking of buying a JCB mobile, don't bother. They are rubbish!

The thought process behind purchasing such a disaster was that I would be safe dropping it as I regularly do and that I would be able to take it out training with me without worrying what the rain would do to it but within half an hour of walking out of the shop, the errors of my ways started to dawn on me.

Technologically, still being stuck somewhere near the end of the last century (that's the 20th not the 19th honest,) I have never actually got around to buying a ring tone, having failed for the last 2 years in attempting to download, Channel 4's theme to the Tour de France but my goodness, I'm going to have to plead mercy to one of my kids to do it for me soon.

Having ascertained that having the engine sound of a JCB earthmover springing into life was inappropriate for an hotelier, rather embarassingly whilst serving at a dinner table, the best of the other awful noises is akin to a drunken Rolf Harris playing 'Canon' on his horrendous Lackofstylophone or whatever it was called and I'm currently stuck with that for the time being.

When I'm out with the family, one of the kids grabs it to turn off the text warning as it is a total affront to their 'Street Cred.' Talking of 'Text,' that's rubbish too! My previous handset, stored about 5,000 messages before it shuddered to a halt, overloaded by a year or so of my personal minutiae. This device seems to have the electronic equivalent of alzeimers, capable of holding only a hundred texts including sent messages, so I'm constantly having to trawl through trying to work out what to keep or delete.

I can't find a way to save regularly used words not in its puny dictionary and I'm unable to even time my boiled eggs.

And worst of all: It doesn't even have 'Smilies' :-( ;-)

Wedding Bells, TV News, Webtastic Wi-Fi Upgrade & Another Nomination

This week's 'Blog' is a little more contented and after a bit of a wobbly October when I was fearing that we may have to resort to redundancies etc., November is proving to be far busier.

More good news is that despite spending half the summer without any of the Government Survey forms, from which the competition is judged upon, we have once again been nominated for the Department of Economic Development's, 'Hotel of the Year Award.'

Watch this space as the ceremony will be held at the Mount Murray Hotel, 30th November.

All our rooms now have digital televisions and the pictures from 'Freeview' are lovely and clear. The added bonus is that we should also be able to improve the quality of vision on our 'Sky' channels, as we will no longer need to feed the old 'Terrestial' channels through our analogue system, meaning there should be less interference

Previously, we had four 'Wi-fi' networks to cover the entire Hotel & Apartments but we have now added further access points and there are now twelve which we are hoping will serve the property far more effectively.

As this is being written, our plumber, Andy Kennish is continuing with the work to upgrade the bathrooms, so you'll have to visit soon to check them out.

Two of our staff have been married this year (not to each other,) so if you're a nervous bachelor, The Welbeck is possibly a place to avoid. Although Rumyana and Piotr tend to work behind the scenes and are probably not too well known to our customers, I'm sure that you'll join me in offering our congratulations.

Unfortunately, Piotr is soon to leave us after three years in the kitchen and Rumyana is currently unable to work because she is still recovering from a broken leg but we're hoping she'll soon be fit to return.

Flybe Take The Biscuit, Then My Money, Then More Money and Then Money to Take Money

A brief update on my post from last week:

I quickly managed to change a name for my Monarch flight for the expected £95.00 with the addition of £2.38 for using a Mastercard, gritting my teeth but there you go. Having paid over £1500 for our total booking, I suppose it isn't that monstrous.

Onwards my fingers marched and having endured perhaps only ten minutes on the telephone, I was finally connected to the Flybe operator who said,'Yes, no problem, that will be £120.06.'

Having been told that it cost £40.00 for each journey, this came somewhat as a shock but apparently in the small print it says that you also have to pay the difference between what the fare was when you booked it and the price now!

What? How? Why? What on earth for?

The brain was whirring and I politely told the Flybe employee that I thought it it was a total rip off and said I'd think about it.

I didn't think for long.

In fact I just re-booked another flight for £104.00 without luggage and we'll use the extra allowance on the spare ticket.

This will leave them with an empty seat and a very unhappy customer. It is incredible that these people can survive in business and I'll do anything in future not to fly Flybe.

How to earn £2700 per hour.

It's have a go at the airlines time again!

Still smarting from being unable to obtain Flybe's unobtainable mandatory free method of payment, I discovered a new way to pay them and Easyjet loads of money to do virtually nothing this week:

Change the name of a flier!

Perhaps my reader knows different but surely, this is just a matter of taking a phone call, re-entering the name and pressing a key on the computer to send the message which should surely take less than two minutes but for which Flybe want to charge me £80.00 and Easyjet £90.00!

I'm actually very tempted to pay an extra £16 or so to book another flight on the Isle of Man leg, just to leave them with an empty seat and we could take an extra suitcase with us*.
Whilst we're on the subject and the blood pressure is starting to rise, I thought I might just mention what happened to us a few years ago, with another tale of how our airlines do their best to ensure they receive our loyalty and goodwill, so that no one else will get caught out:

On a break during a flight from Australia, I thought that it would be a marvellous idea to check for our Flybe trip from Manchester to the Isle of Man. It was only when I reached the end of the procedure that I realised that there was no facility to print out the boarding passes.

You can only imagine our unbounded joy when we arrived in Manchester and they informed me that I'd have to pay £40 for four boarding passes.

As a result of this, I bought a printer for our guest computer, so that this wouldn't happen to any of our customers.

For your information, we also have a pair of scales which we can lend out to pre-weigh your bags.

*Whilst dining last night, I realised that those of you of sound mind with a mild dose of logic would realise what a lot of nonsense that line is. I'd like to say that I was just testing your alertness but I'm afraid I must be just a bit thick.