The show goes on

Avril Owton comes confidently into the pretty foyer of her hotel, settles herself down and crosses her dancer's legs. Thirty years ago, she was a Tiller Girl and she runs her business with the same theatrical attitude.

"This is how I train my staff," she says. "I say, if you went to a show and the artists came out with sour faces… so many hoteliers," she leans forward confidentially, "are so miserable."

And if anyone knows the meaning of that old showbiz maxim "the show must go on", it's Avril. In 1991, her husband Tom died. She was left with four children, two of them in private school, a run-down hotel - and no life insurance.

Her first reaction was to sell the place, but an article in a women's magazine changed her mind. She remembers it almost word for word. "It said: ‘it's your life, so get pro-active'!" she remembers. "I decided that night to change my life."

In September last year, she spent a "brilliant" week at the London Business School as one of the winners of award scheme the Cosmopolitan-Wallis Entrepreneurs Programme, and in November she was named the Lady Montagu Hampshire Woman of the Year in recognition of her personal and business achievements.

The Cloud hotel, on the edge of the New Forest, has been upgraded to three Crowns Highly Commended by the English Tourist Board. Turnover has increased by 160% and it employs 20 staff. Yet before her husband's death, Avril did much of the cleaning and cooking - as well as being chambermaid and waitress. "Tom would not delegate, or trust anyone to do anything," she recalls sadly. "But the more responsibility you give your staff, the more they grow. People don't believe that, do they?"

She was shy in those days and inclined to keep in the background, but she understood things instinctively. "The hospitality business had changed considerably over the previous 16 years," she recalls, "but we hadn't changed at all. We got left behind completely."

After keeping the hotel going for a year on her own - still doing all the cooking - her first priority was to upgrade the facilities. She closed the hotel to put en suite bathrooms in all the rooms, a long and ultimately costly job. In her grief and naivety, she didn't choose the best person for the job and the work took twice as long as it should have done.

It was also bitterly cold during those four winter months. "I used to go out into my car to keep warm," Avril grimaces. "It was a total nightmare. But at the end of it, I have come out much stronger and wiser."

The tide turned, she thinks, at the end of 1994, and the Cloud is almost as she wants it. There's still a little way to go, but with its baskets of flowers, pretty drapes and cosy chairs, Avril's attention to detail is evident. She doesn't miss a thing. If a member of staff doesn't come out quickly enough to greet guests, she wants to know why - in the nicest possible way. "I don't see the point in tearing people off a strip. We have a very good relationship," she says. "I find repetition is the best thing."

"I think service is so important," she adds. "You can have all the facilities you want but if the staff don't care or look after the customer, what's the use? I say to them, this is where we can score."

She has been on a marketing course, which she greatly enjoyed. But valuable though such courses are, Avril relies mainly on common sense. "I keep my eyes open all the time," she says, "I take my brochures with me everywhere I go."

These days, she goes to quite a few places. She's been on Radio Solent, she was invited to join the City of London Women's Network and was asked to give a talk to a women's group in Basildon. "I had never given a talk in my life!" she exclaims. "But that's what it's all about - networking." She has also joined the Institute of Directors.

Last year, she took part in a cancer charity challenge in the Malvern Hills. It involved "bivvying" for two nights, a 30-mile walk, crossing a quarry on a flying fox and more. It had a profound effect on her. "I lived so much of my life in fear," she confesses. "For 20 years, I wouldn't go on the underground. But after that, I thought - I'm going on it. And I did."

Her mission now is to encourage other women. "So many women are afraid like I used to be," she says. "But if you can die like my husband did, sitting in his chair in his own home, you might as well take up any challenge."