A Black Swan is the term which economists use to describe a unexpected and devastating event which scuppers all your plans. The Lake District had its own Black Swan in November when the unprecedented rainfall caused unprecedented floods which frightened away all our tourist trade. This was followed by a family of Black Cygnets when 5 successive snowfalls over as many weeks made certain that the tourists wouldn’t or couldn’t come flooding back.
Some lateral thinking was needed if our businesses were to be saved. We hit upon the idea of ‘Super Sundays’ where hotels would give away their rooms for next to nothing on the first four Sundays of the year. We put the idea to our colleagues and they loved it. So did the public. As soon as ‘Super Sundays’ went public more than 1000 room nights were sold. The idea also caught the imagination of the local TV and the national press. This video is of me being interviewed about Super Sundays for the ITV news and the item was shown on the 6 o’clock news and again at 10.30.
Posts Tagged ‘Newby Bridge’
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
A Black Swan on Lake Windermere
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
BBC TV at the Newby Bridge Hotel
The BBC chose a packed bar at The Newby Bridge Hotel today to film a piece for the early evening news. The story was about the safe haven which the staff at The Newby Bridge Hotel had given to the staff from nearby hotels which had been closed by the floods. The piece went out live and I got the chance to say on camera how proud I was of my staff in rallying round. The bar looked warm and welcoming, with an open log fire in awful contrast to the Swan Hotel lying cold and empty opposite us.
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
Lakes Hospitality Association Interiors Show
When the water level on Lake Windermere rose by 9ft on Friday, closing the roads to Ambleside, there seemed to be little prospect of opening the Interiors Show at the Low Wood Hotel on the shores of the Lake as planned on the Monday morning. Cancellation would have been disastrous for Lakes Hospitality as the Show is one of the two big money events of the year. But nothing fazes Gail, the Show’s indefatigable organisor and when the roads re-opened over the weekend she declared “Business as usual”. All the exhibitors made it, but we had the bizarre experience of hearing the event being trailed on the local radio news only for the traffic bulletin which followed the news advising people not to travel to the Lakes because of the weather.
I was pleased to see Ian Steel at the J. Atkinson and Son stand, not least because he was generously supplying everyone with free cups of his excellent Java and Elephant coffees. Ian was in jubilant spirits, holding aloft a copy of the Independent, in which his coffee shop (founded as the Grasshopper Tea Warehouse in 1837) had just been named as one of the best 50 food shops in the country. Here’s the link- http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/food-drink/the-50-best-food-shops-1823609.html?action=Popup&ino=39. I got chatting to Ian about my “Do One Thing” campaign and he told me about his brilliant “one fell scoop” idea. The way it works is that instead of supplying coffee to his commercial customers in individual sachets, he supplies it in bulk together with a scoop which measures out the quantity which would have been in the sachet. This saves him a fortune in the time saved by not having to fill the sachets and the cost of the sachets themselves. All his customers love it and he has the added satisfaction of saving the world into the bargain. Very Slow Life.
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Flip Video
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify. Simplify” Thoreau
The essence of the Slow Life is simplicity. Some people have decided that to pursue the Slow Life they have to eschew technology. They crave the simple life before progress made it complicated. For my part I love progress, I love technology but I love it best when it’s simple. Most innovative products can’t resist the temptation to over-complicate and to add every possible feature, most of which the average customer doesn’t want or need.
The Flip video is the epitome of good simple design. It’s a small video camera, not much bigger than a mobile phone, which only has two functions- Record and Play Back. There’s a built in USB port which plugs directly into the computer which automatically downloads the videos, without the need for software. The Flip is so good I’ve bought five of them- one for me, one for each of the hotels and on for the Heroes of She. For the hotels the Flip is a simple and very effective marketing tool. When a guest is saying how much they’ve enjoyed their stay the receptionist can record them without any fuss and then post the video on the website. Seeing people actually speaking spontaneously and sincerely is much more effective than just reading words in cold print. I think we are the first hotel to be doing this but the idea is so simple and effective that I’m sure it will soon be the norm. All power to the Flip- the epitome of Slow Life technology.
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Do One Thing
I’ve signed up all the hotels to the Guardian’s 10:10 campaign – to cut energy consumption by 10% in 2010. Some members of staff are already totally enthusiastic about all things green, but we needed to get everyone involved and to get them thinking about their responsibilities and about what they could do on a personal level. The, ‘do one thing’ campaign asks every member of staff to think about their routine and to come up with an idea to help the environment. The idea is that if we all ‘do one thing’ then collectively we can make a difference. With a bribe of a box of fair trade chocolates for the best idea the campaign has been a great success. Everyone has been talking about what they can do and here is a video with some of their ideas.