Celebrity Guests

At the end of a hard day, I hang up my hat, but ….

At the end of a hard day of work, I hang up my old hat, and in the morning it is still hanging there, waiting for me ….. along with the work!

Anybody in business knows that the work never stops, and if you have some days where you can hang up your hat at night and not put it back on again until the next morning, you count yourself very lucky indeed.

This is particularly so in the hospitality business, where, in these days of real time digital connectivity, the clients anticipate almost instantaneous attention. It is not unusual for me to be fielding phone calls at 2.00am when international clients or their agents forget, or don’t care, that we are on the other side of the world.
Add to this the voracious appetite of social media, with the market and google demanding that there be lots of ‘white noise’ around your brand, and either side of that 2.00am phone call I am likely to be posting …. or updating websites, rates and availability …. and it goes on.

And of course, February is peak season, so the phone never stops, with everyone trying to get reservations for days that have been sold out for months.

Then in the middle of it all, this week we were contacted regarding reservations for 2 lots of celebrity guests. Now all of our guests are VIPs to us, and by and large their stay will be virtually identical to everybody else’s stay. But one was an International A-list couple, and you can’t help but feel a little pressure to make sure that it runs smoothly.

So this week, while I made the joke about hanging my hat up, and the work and the hat waiting for me in the morning, I was only half joking.