Excluded hoteliers rage at telegraph promotion
Hoteliers excluded from last year's Daily Telegraph hotel promotion claim their worst fears have been realised and that they have lost thousands of pounds as a result.
Last September's promotion caused a furore when a number of hotels which had been in the promotion in previous years were omitted.
The hoteliers concerned said they were given no satisfactory explanation as to why they had not been included, and were anxious they would lose hundreds of bookings.
Speaking to Caterer last week, Sandra Elliott, proprietor of the Grapevine hotel in Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, said her business had suffered greatly over the past few months because of its absence from the promotion.
"In November we only got a third of the business that we had the previous year, and in December we did 50% of the business. We have lost many thousands of pounds and that will continue," said Ms Elliott.
"We have done everything we can to make up the business apart from standing in the street and shouting."
Chedly Mahfoudh, proprietor of the Holcombe Hotel in Deddington, Oxfordshire, agreed the absence of his hotel from last year's scheme had been disastrous. "There is no doubt about it, our hotel has been badly affected. We have lost about £15,000-worth of business by being cut out and we have still never had any good explanation as to why we weren't in," he said.
However, Mike Cox, head of sales promotion at the ETB, which co-ordinated the Daily Telegraph promotion, said the hotels had been foolish to try to gain custom from just one source. "Hotels should not hang all their plans and entire future on one promotion," he said.
lNeptune Developments has won more than £3m from a European Union development fund for the building of a four-star hotel in Queens Square in the heart of Liverpool.
The 147-bedroom property, which will be operated by Swallow Hotels, has caused controversy among hoteliers in the city because it is absorbing virtually all the European funds available for development in the area.
Neptune will also be building a complex of restaurants, cafés, shops and offices in the same area.
