Perfect Conference timing.

As a member of Pride of Britain Hotels we meet every year in November for an annual conference. Initially when we joined the consortium we were a seasonal hotel and it made a great celebration of the end of the year and gave us the opportunity to hear how others had prgressed through the previous year and gave us ideas and allowed us to benchmank progress of Eriska against others. Now with us still being open through the winter and the fast moving industry it is very much a good opportunity to discuss industry related matters and hear how others are developing.

This year was even more appropriate as half way through the conference, luckily we had a break planned for the afternoon, otherwise we may have had an empty conference room,  our Chancellor announced his changes in the VAT rates. This whilst crreating complete confusion and dissarray eventually allowed us to hear what others had planned and then hopefully we will at least be in step with our collegues. On the other side of the fence we were also joined at the conference by some of our suppliers as their rates will be changing and especially as our wines and spirits suppliers will be altering all their rates also!

The concensus of opinion was that in general most of the industry would pass on the  VAt reduction although some would use the reductiuon to offset the planned increase in rates for 2009. However most round teh room did not see the changes increasing confiodence in the market or optimism unless you were working for Sage accounting or the printing industry who now are assured of a busy run up to Christmas reprogramming computers and reprinting tariffs!

I suppose for luddites like myself it is another sales pitch for the internet where prices and tax rates can be alterd at the touch of a button rather than waiting for a print run and then all the waste of mispriced paper. Fortunately we had not quite yet printed our tariffs for 2009 although we had set our rates so I spend a very interesting afternoon yesterday recomputing all our rates for the next 12 months.At least Fabrice will be saved from having to input all his wine and spirits priuces again as with the duty rasies its all change but no change for him!