Amid the gloom, still high points ahead
The last time from Paris and the last few days before our final Investors in People assessment - keep your fingers crossed.
We held our strategy day last week and had long arguments about the way ahead for the coming year. So much has changed, and yet so much is the same. Perhaps we have more time now to focus on problems that we were too busy to address before.
Other than increasing revenues and profit, and because we want to communicate objectives with our staff, we focus our strategies on staff and guest satisfaction.
One area where we still, in the eyes of our staff, do rather badly, is in providing them with the equipment and materials needed to do a good job. Although our rating (from the summer staff survey) improved a lot on this point, it is still far from ideal and we know some of the reasons.
Since part of the materials issue is linked to investment, and since there is less money, it also means that it will make us stronger as a team. Some departments will have to do without what they had planned for, because whatever we can afford will have to go to the most needy.
Enough of the doom and gloom. Is there anything exciting ahead in 2002 other than the euro in our pockets?
The answer is: yes. My good relations with the UK restaurant trade have helped us to secure the first-ever finals of the World Master of Culinary Arts award. This is the brainchild of Roy Ackerman, Richard Shepherd and Peter Williams, the main sponsor being Wedgwood. Seven countries, seven parties to celebrate the winners in each country, and then the final event in May at our hotel.
What an event that will be: the politics, the critics - and imagine all the famous chefs. So many egos involved and only one will win.
The key to it all are the judges, drawn from all walks of life. They include Nigella Lawson, Sir Terence Conran, Richard Shepherd, Rick Stein and Sir David Wright.
Well, that's my time over. I must stop or I could go on forever but, before I finish, I would like to add my congratulations to Karen Earp, who recently won the Hotelier of the Year award. What an inspiration, a truly modern hotelier - and another "girl", at last.
And what better place to receive such an accolade? Chewton Glen must be one of the most beautiful and well-run hotels in the world.
DAGMARWOODWARD is general manager of the Hotel Inter-Continental Paris
