Cultured Views

Hotel owners - what language should you speak…?

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Wouldn’t it be great if there was a facility, even one very much with tongue-in-cheek, for hotel owners to rate their guests individually just as the guests are able to rate hotels?

I think it would be wonderful. What categories could we use:

* attitude

* in-room cleanliness (taking in those who cannot work out what a toilet flush is for - or a waste bin for that matter)

* behaviour/table manners in dining room

* friendliness/consideration towards other guests

“Yes”, I can hear you say, wouldn’t it be fun…

That last point though is what I particularly would like to be able to rate some guests on - and I have to admit I would be brutal in this regard. How some guests treat other guests can be quite surprising - especially when the some guests are natives of the country the hotel is in and the other guests are those dreaded foreigners.

Take France for example. We are noticing an increasing number of French guests who seem quite affronted when they encounter fellow guests who do not speak French - and naturally - because those other guests are not French! in fact they are even going to the trouble of registering complaints about it…

I accept that the French basically do not travel that widely outside of France, if at all, so some of them are not used to people of other nationalities. They arrive at a little hotel somewhere in their beloved France and of course expect to greeted in their own language - which they are, maybe not absolutely fluently - but their language all the same. But what puzzles me is why on earth they object to their hosts greeting other guests in the language those other guests speak…?

Why should the host rattle off a barrage of French to a Spanish couple when the host can speak fluent Spanish and thus communicate more politely and amiably with them…? why would the hosts deliberately make communication with their American guests impossible by speaking in French to them when both they, and you, are native English speakers…?

The one thing we love about this job is clearly obvious during breakfast times when all our guests are eating in the dining room; a variety of nationalities - Italian, English, Dutch, German, Spanish and even Slovakian - and all chatting away between themselves in their own native tongues, a nice mix of cultures and languages. And in the middle of them all sits a French couple offended that they are doing so…

Certainly when we go on holiday we chat in english between ourselves and have some fun attempting the local lingo with the ‘natives’. But - and I wish that some French would learn this - it is just not practical, nor at all necessary, to expect your guests to be anything other than who they are. It is where they come from that makes them so interesting.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Own up…what do YOU pinch from a hotel?

It never ceases to amaze me how some people assume that paying to stay in a hotel room also entitles them to consider various items in their room - even the hotel itself - as souvenirs to be collected and taken home.

We have had guests with this very attitude. One couple not only packed their clothes before they left but also the cover off the bed; we have had a lamp go missing; countless pieces of cutlery, cups and glasses.

Of course the magazines we provide also find their way into guests luggage - but that’s okay as magazines are dispensible and we replace them on a weekly basis anyway…

We ourselves have been guilty too - I once borrowed a teacup from a room and my partner likes those little promotional pens some hotels place in the rooms with the hotel emblem-embossed writing paper. We have quite a collection of those!

But our prize for the most brazen goes to some recent guests - a family of three - who arrived with their own pillows and then exchanged them for our new ones. I hope they enjoy reading their credit card statement next month…

Popularity: 8% [?]

Some things you cannot insure for…

Anyone who has seen the news reports of yesterday’s horrific plane crash in Madrid would be thinking just how on earth these things manage to occur in the first place. It breaks your heart to know that those people were all just starting out on a nice holiday; many probably sitting in their seats with the same pre-takeoff jitters that most of us experience and yet convincing themselves that planes don’t just crash that easily. I know because I do exactly the same thing - I am a nervous flyer and sit with white knuckles throughout the entire flight.

We all know that before we go off on holiday to have all our travel documents, our travel medical insurance and our plans all organised and in place. But how can you be prepared for something as unexpected as this…?

The most important things we tend to overlook; telling those close to us that we love them, resolving an argument, bringing closure to a long held conflict. I know that we cannot all live each day with the assumption that each day could be our last…but maybe tragedies such as this serve to remind us about what is really important in life.

Popularity: 5% [?]