THE papers are full of statistics these days about pubs shutting up for good. Many are said to be struggling following the introduction of the smoking ban and the fact that you can enjoy cut price drink at home. According to recent reports between 36 and 52 pubs are closing every week.
Time and time again I’ve read the same story about closures and thought nothing of it. Surely it must just be lazy landlords who refuse to respond to current customers’ needs? Perhaps they should all just turn into gastro pubs? But then at the weekend I visited the Sun Inn in Leintwardine, Herefordshire, and my whole opinion changed.
The Sun Inn is said to be Britain’s last remaining parlour pub. You walk through the front door and it’s like entering someone’s living room. You join the regulars on wooden benches at long tables and get involved in the pub table games. There’s no bar; drinks are brought direct from the barrels in the kitchen (regulars just help themselves).
But earlier this year the pub was threatened with closure. Following the death of the landlady (who was in her nineties) in June the property was put up for auction. Many feared it would be picked up by a developer for converting into a house. Britain’s heritage was on the verge of being destroyed.
Then, after national media coverage, the pub was withdrawn from the sale and a team a team of volunteers stepped in to keep it running. They come in and open the pub for a few hours in the evenings. Now ‘a friend of the pub’ is on the verge of completing the purchase of the Grade II listed building and keeping it as a parlour pub.
Entering the cosy bar, that looks straight out of the 1930s, you can’t help but get involved in the conversations of the fellow drinkers. There’s no juke box or noisy quiz machine to divert your attention. It means that visitors quickly feel as if they are part of the village.
From talking to villagers both inside and outside the pub, we saw the important role The Sun plays in the village. The other, more conventional, pub in Leintwardine closed about a year ago so there was great worry about The Sun closing. All the local interest groups drink there and friends meet for drinks. There is nothing else for them in Leintwardine.
We heard the stories about regulars who travel from across Britain to visit the pub, some even come from London each month. The night we visited there were drinkers popping in from all over the county.
But the most interesting stories were about the former landlady Florence ‘Flossie’ Lane who died in June. Across from the bar was Miss Lane’s private sitting room, with the armchair in where she slept most nights for many years, rather than venturing to the upstairs bedrooms. But as she became more frail the regulars converted a store room into a downstairs bedroom. One would kiss her good night at the end of each day.
The Sun Inn may need a bit of updating; some complain about the grotty toilets. But changing it too much would destroy what is unique about the pub. We shouldn't just change things to respond to consumer demand. Britain’s heritage deserves to be saved for future generations.
Hopefully now the future is more certain for The Sun. I will certainly be keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn’t become another statistic.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Checking in to new British heritage
THE classic British sitcom Fawlty Towers first hit our screens more than 30 years ago but the re-runs still leave fans in hysterics. Few can claim not to have seen at some point an episode of the series featuring the manic and inept manger Basil Fawlty, his dominant wife Sybil and the incompetent Spanish waiter Manuel.
Business rarely ran smoothly at Fawlty Towers: meals were served cold, guests faced maintenance to their rooms while they slept and luggage went missing. But anyone that complained faced a torrent of verbal abuse and insult from Basil. Rather than trying to sort the problem out, guests would be kicked out the front door. Now that’s customer service.
Fawlty Towers may have only been a fictional seaside hotel yet its legacy has become enshrined in British culture. No matter how much is spent improving and marketing facilities, many still expect poor service when they choose to spend the night away from home.
Putting the plush five star properties aside as they are out of reach of ordinary leisure travellers, the traditional hotels have for some time had a challenger in the form of budget hotel chains.
Travelodge, the first budget brand to launch in the UK, started with seven roadside lodges in 1985 (it all began on the A38 north of Lichfield). The chain now has about 380 locations in Britain, and claims to currently open one hotel every six working days. Travelodge says on its website it targets adding more than 3,000 rooms every year.
But the number one operator in Britain is Premier Inn with more than 500 hotels. Like Travelodge, they are now as likely to be found on A-roads on the outskirts of towns as they are in city centres.
Premier Inn, Travelodge and the like started out as roadside stop-offs for weary travellers wanting to break long journeys. Today, they are more often destinations in their own right. Families enjoy breaks in them while they visit seaside resorts like Blackpool and Eastbourne or explore Britain’s heritage in major cities like London and Manchester.
In the early days of holidaying the catering options for guests were not good – they ate the food given or nothing at all. Today, budget hotels normally have a restaurant and bar like a Beefeater or Harvester’s metres from where they will sleep. Choice is the flavour of the day on the large menus.
Premier Inn recently revealed sales had fallen by 7.7% in the previous six months but was keen to emphasise that this was not as drastic as the hotel sector as a whole because business travellers were “trading down from three and four-star hotels to find better value”. Adjoining eateries defied the credit crunch with 2.1% a growth in like-for-like sales.
Once the economy recovers you can imagine that budget hotel performance will pick up again. In the next few years there are going to be many more Travelodges, Premier Inns, Day’s Inn and the like cropping up around Britain.
As a child of budget hotel age (I was born in 1983 when Travelodge was in the planning stages) I’d say the opening up of new sites is a good thing. These chains are raising the game of all in the market and encouraging all hotels to offer better customer service. That can’t be a bad thing.
Just as the hotel typified by Fawlty Towers has a lasting legacy in British culture, is Travelodge be part of our national heritage? Perhaps one day the original Travelodge building will get protected status. Only time will tell.
Business rarely ran smoothly at Fawlty Towers: meals were served cold, guests faced maintenance to their rooms while they slept and luggage went missing. But anyone that complained faced a torrent of verbal abuse and insult from Basil. Rather than trying to sort the problem out, guests would be kicked out the front door. Now that’s customer service.
Fawlty Towers may have only been a fictional seaside hotel yet its legacy has become enshrined in British culture. No matter how much is spent improving and marketing facilities, many still expect poor service when they choose to spend the night away from home.
Putting the plush five star properties aside as they are out of reach of ordinary leisure travellers, the traditional hotels have for some time had a challenger in the form of budget hotel chains.
Travelodge, the first budget brand to launch in the UK, started with seven roadside lodges in 1985 (it all began on the A38 north of Lichfield). The chain now has about 380 locations in Britain, and claims to currently open one hotel every six working days. Travelodge says on its website it targets adding more than 3,000 rooms every year.
But the number one operator in Britain is Premier Inn with more than 500 hotels. Like Travelodge, they are now as likely to be found on A-roads on the outskirts of towns as they are in city centres.
Premier Inn, Travelodge and the like started out as roadside stop-offs for weary travellers wanting to break long journeys. Today, they are more often destinations in their own right. Families enjoy breaks in them while they visit seaside resorts like Blackpool and Eastbourne or explore Britain’s heritage in major cities like London and Manchester.
In the early days of holidaying the catering options for guests were not good – they ate the food given or nothing at all. Today, budget hotels normally have a restaurant and bar like a Beefeater or Harvester’s metres from where they will sleep. Choice is the flavour of the day on the large menus.
Premier Inn recently revealed sales had fallen by 7.7% in the previous six months but was keen to emphasise that this was not as drastic as the hotel sector as a whole because business travellers were “trading down from three and four-star hotels to find better value”. Adjoining eateries defied the credit crunch with 2.1% a growth in like-for-like sales.
Once the economy recovers you can imagine that budget hotel performance will pick up again. In the next few years there are going to be many more Travelodges, Premier Inns, Day’s Inn and the like cropping up around Britain.
As a child of budget hotel age (I was born in 1983 when Travelodge was in the planning stages) I’d say the opening up of new sites is a good thing. These chains are raising the game of all in the market and encouraging all hotels to offer better customer service. That can’t be a bad thing.
Just as the hotel typified by Fawlty Towers has a lasting legacy in British culture, is Travelodge be part of our national heritage? Perhaps one day the original Travelodge building will get protected status. Only time will tell.
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