Pride of Britain annual Lunch- Hotel of the Year

When we first joined Pride of Britain Hotels back in the 90's we were very much a seasonal hotel closing in October and notreopening until Easter. Then Pride of Britain held a conference in the autumn whichreally summed up the last year andwas a chance to reflect on the year gone by and the next time we met was in April at the AGM which was held in London and marked the start of the next season for us. It was a chanceto reacquaint ourselves with other members and hear of plans for the year ahead.

Times have now really changed we are open all year round and the two meetings of Pride of Britain have alsotaken on new shapes. The conference represents a time that all the members are together and strategic decisions and changes can be made with as much discussion as is required and theAGM then becomes theannual report on the last years business and less about plans for the future. Therefore this year fro the first time we removed the Sales and Reservation element from the April meetingand held a seminar earlier in the year beforeeveryone started to get busy and yesterday was our official AGM with all the official paperwork to be completed.

It also provided us with the opportunity to announce the Hotel of the yearand as my last official engagement as Chairman, it was with great pleasure that I was able to award  this mantle to my fathers favourite London Hotel, in fact he used to tell people it was his residence when in town,- The Goring. We heard an excellent speech from Steven Norris and all left in a certainly more positive manner than i had initially expected. Whenever hoteliers are together it is either a chance for m,embers to boast on how busy they are or moan about how quiet they are. Normally both are slight exaggerations but on this occasion everybody seemed to be far more realistic, all were not as busy as last year and were hopeful that we had turned the corner on the current situation, we will now leave it up to the Chancellor to depress and shatter the illusions in tomorrows budget!!