London dash

Yesterday was the Pride of Britain Front of House conference so Rowena and I dashed south to London for the day. It was an interesting conference split into three sections. The first covered the way Pride of Britain worked and how the hotels could benefit most from working together, the second was a talk by Stuart Harrison, who confidently titles his company the Profitable Hotel Company, not ideal given that Pride of Britain is a non profit making organization, (although it may have given our chief executive food for thought) and the third was a tutorial about how to get the most from the Internet and especially the on line booking engine. Having been a complete Doubting Thomas a year ago I have been forced to change my outlook and take the mantle of "if you can't beat them join them" as many of our customers book on line as a preference and if we did not try to embrace the technology then we would be left on our own very soon.

I was mainly there in my capacity as Chairman of Pride of Britain but this gave me the opportunity to try and learn something, although my greatest lesson was from Rowena who insisted on leaving London with an excessive amount of time (in my opinion) before we had to catch a plane. However as we sat in the delayed Heathrow Express and just made the plane in time to board I had to admit that maybe a little less haste was better for the heart!!