Why are British hotels so unremitingly crap?

[MossCommuter]

...and no, I don't want half a dozen towels and five bottles of liquid gloop in the bathroom (none of which seem to be "fit-for- purpose")... and I can blooming well carry my own bags up to my room because I don't want you hanging around expecting a tip....sod off...

All of these things are precisely why I do go to hotels.

 

[slowmotion]

Very good MC.

BTW, is it your money that settles the bill?

 

[zimzum42]

Because "hospitality" is not seen as a profession in the UK.

For me, this is the real answer.

I travel a lot for business (94000 air miles last year, not bad!), and have stayed in all sorts of places. I can tolerate small rooms and crap beds if the staff are attentive, fast and polite/friendly. They are amazing at this in Asia (on the airlines as well)
Without fail in the UK I tend to get indifferent service and it's a complete disaster if you dare ask for anything out of the ordinary. Night time room service takes an eternity. Ask for an oversight to be corrected and they react as if you have asked them to kiss your ring.
Clearly there are plenty of exceptions to this (I don't want a boring list of how the people at Dunroamin in Cleethorpes are lovely), but I think by and large service in hotels in the UK is dramatically below par.

 

[srw]

As someone's already pointed out, that's because we don't take hospitality seriously as a career choice. If you find a Brit member of staff in a hotel in the South-East, chances are they're a student earning beer money. And that, in turn, is because the money is crap. And that, in turn (I suspect) is because the hotel owner's income goes to pay the mortgage or the rent rather than the staff.

In general my experiences have been pretty good, but then I've either been on expenses or in small B&Bs in far-flung corners of the country. My worst recently was in central London very close to one of our oldest historical buildings and a well-known bridge. The room was great, but the food was lousy - £20 for a soggy pizza, and the breakfast (stale rolls, dry eggs, leathery bacon) would have shamed a 70s little chef.

 

[Globalti]

I was once part of the problem - when i was about nineteen I trotted along to my local four star hotel and asked the manager for a holiday job. Amazingly he agreed although he did tell me I was too scruffy. Next evening I found myself adorned in a red tartan Thistle Hotels jacket employed as 100% inexperienced night porter. I can well remember some of the upsets I caused and the way I dealt with guests. I had never even stayed in an hotel myself so I had no idea of what a night porter was supposed to do and say.

It was about three weeks before anybody explained that you were supposed to charge guests for snacks and drinks by getting them to sign a chitty. Up to then I used to go down to the kitchen, raid the fridge and bring up mahoosive student-style creations made from bits and pieces I found to the obvious delight of hungry male guests arriving late at night, then not charge them. Gawd knows what would have happened if there had been a fire during the night as I was completely untrained. Mind you, I learned a few things about the behaviour of some guests while away from home - three reps came in and asked me for "three pints of bitter and three harlots" which floored me a bit.

 

[Cletus Van Damme]

My wife wants to go away for her birthday in May and quite honestly the prices are making me wince. I have stayed in quite a few pretty expensive ones and I have for the most part have not been that impressed. Having said that I have found the staff in the expensive Lake District ones to be top notch, whether this is because most of them are not english (usually eastern european) I do not know. I still think that they are vastly overpriced for what they are and if I had my way I would just stay in a Premier Inn in a nice city and make sure that I did not eat a meal (except breakfast) there as the food is usually shockingly bad.

Premier Inn seems to be the best for the cash, only tried a cheaper Travel Lodge once and never again.

 

[martint235]

To be fair I think it's the cheaper end of the market that we don't do very well at and that the rest of the world seems to effortless excel in. Less than £100 a night will buy you complete c**p in the UK as a general rule but for about £50 a night in France you can get a really decent room, good service and reasonable breakfast.

I do think that once you pay £200 a night in this country then unless you're unlucky you will get something fairly special. My personal favourite is the White Vine House in Rye in East Sussex. Me and SWMBO go as often as we can afford to.

 

[User482]

I travel ... a lot, but mostly overseas, predominantly Europe but occasionally further afield and yoiu know what, on the whole hotels, resteraunts etc are pretty excellent. The buildings, rooms, environments are generally good, the service excellent but not overpowering and food is usually more than acceptable and often very good indeed, both in chains and independants.

Tonight I decided to stay-over near our Bristol factory and am staying at a 'Country Club' hotel, looks fine on the internet, but it's a mess, the building is/was 'designed' in best described as a random style of nothing in particular that's good, the staff are fairly hopeless, the beer choice is crap and the foods awful, they'd run out of anchovies for the Ceaser salad ....
I dispair, and it's £90 a night.
No wonder the Premiere Inn is always full.

Redwood hotel, perchance? Yeah, it's crap. For business travel, a premiere inn, in the middle of a town fits the bill perfectly - the beds are comfy and you can walk to a decent pub.

 

[ASC1951]

....(I don't want a boring list of how the people at Dunroamin in Cleethorpes are lovely)....

And they are. Just not to snotty Londoners.

 

[Fab Foodie]

Redwood hotel, perchance? Yeah, it's crap. For business travel, a premiere inn, in the middle of a town fits the bill perfectly - the beds are comfy and you can walk to a decent pub.

Every part of the above is correct!

I complained last night and this morning about the food last night - ordered a Ceaser salad as a starter and 'Linguine with Capers and Olives', nothing too taxing. The salad arrived with an apology that there were no anchovies and they gave me olives instead (ordinary lettuce, croutons from a packet and parmesan shavings with a touch of sauce) .... the Linguine was like tomato soup in a bowl with overcooked pasta and some capers and olives chicked in at the last minute, dreadful. But other details like the bar menu I was handed was scrappy and dirty and they ask your room number every 30s. The place was soulless as were the staff. The rooms were OK.
I agree that Premiere inns and good pubs/B&B when you can find them take some beating. I'd almost never stay in a UK hotel for a holiday/personal time, only through necessity.

I wished I'd driven home ...

 

[swee'pea99]

I think we just don't do service very well - hotels are just one manifestation of our legendary talent for resentment. I'm not sure if any other language has a phrase like: 'Oo does 'e think 'e is? Certainly Americans, for just one example, are more inclined to revere success than resent it. Poor as the service tends to be in hotels, it's generally just as bad in mid-ranking restaurants, where service tends to be either nauseatingly obsequious in search of tips or 'I'm too busy to notice you'. In my experience the only place you find a genuine welcome in this country is in a good b&b, run by people who are actually pleased to have guests - or, on occasion, a pub which isn't in the pocket of resentful regulars. Oh, and last word on hotels, let's not forget the great bane of this nation, above all others: crap management.

 

[User482]

Every part of the above is correct!

I complained last night and this morning about the food last night - ordered a Ceaser salad as a starter and 'Linguine with Capers and Olives', nothing too taxing. The salad arrived with an apology that there were no anchovies and they gave me olives instead (ordinary lettuce, croutons from a packet and parmesan shavings with a touch of sauce) .... the Linguine was like tomato soup in a bowl with overcooked pasta and some capers and olives chicked in at the last minute, dreadful. But other details like the bar menu I was handed was scrappy and dirty and they ask your room number every 30s. The place was soulless as were the staff. The rooms were OK.
I agree that Premiere inns and good pubs/B&B when you can find them take some beating. I'd almost never stay in a UK hotel for a holiday/personal time, only through necessity.

I wished I'd driven home ...

The real sadness, and you had no way of knowing this, is that the Redwood hotel is adjacent to some outstanding mountain bike trails. If you find yourself staying in the area again, bring your bike and give me a shout!

 

[User169]

Can I just point out that a caesar salad doesn't have anchovies in it. Thank you.

 

[swee'pea99]

Reminds me of "Sorry, we've run out of Waldorfs."

 

[Fab Foodie]

Can I just point out that a caesar salad doesn't have anchovies in it. Thank you.

You can, this salad was neither fish nor fowl ... in fact having no anchovies as advertised it certainly wasn't fish and it was pretty foul ...