Open all hours

This time last year, when the Globe Hotel in Overton, Lancashire, was still under its previous tenants, the pub took only £11,000 for the whole of December. Now, under managers John and Sally Hunt and tenants John Hughes and Sue Birkhead, that figure has been trebled.

For Christmas week, the Globe took £9,000. The pub was full for Christmas Day lunch, eventually serving 32 of the seven-course set meals at £30 a head, and it even opened successfully on Christmas night, to the surprise of John Hunt.

"We obviously expected to be busy for Christmas Day lunch but the night was busy as well, and we only opened for drink," he says. "I thought it would be just regulars, but we were about the only pub open in the area so we had a lot of ‘strangers' in."

The Christmas Day take was £2,500, but the Hunts have a young family and having to spend the whole of Christmas Day working a full pub was, Hunt implies, something he could easily have done without.

"Our regulars thanked us for opening on Christmas Day," he says. "The only reason we did was because they had been asking us throughout the year. In my 15 years as a licensee I've never opened a pub on Christmas night but, from a business point of view, it was quite a success."

New Year's Eve was bound to be a profitable evening, no matter what - Overton is a small village and the Globe is fast becoming its social centre. On the night the pub took £3,400, with the last revellers leaving at an exhausting 4am to give the Hunts their best trading day so far.

The only food available on the night was a £9.99 buffet, for which there were 50 takers. It had originally been priced at £19.99, but lack of interest led to a rethink and a smaller, more traditional offer turned out to be popular.

"A lot of people wandered in because they were going from parties to pubs to parties, but the pub was full all night," says Hunt. "We tried to reserve tables for the 50 people eating the buffet, but that became harder as the night went on."

Positive feedback

And, like Christmas Day, the feedback from customers was pleasingly positive. "Most people were delighted that we weren't charging for entrance," says Hunt. "They appreciated that we could if we had wanted to, but we recognised that it's a village pub so we decided not to."

Hunt says the full Globe fared better than some of the more obvious party destinations nearby: "A lot of the pubs in Morecambe got caught out," he says. "We were hearing stories about one of the huge pubs on the prom which would normally be very busy but only had 38 people in."

The success of Christmas and New Year has left Hunt exhausted but optimistic about the year to come. "The important thing to my mind," says Hunt, "is that we've taken three times more this December than they took in 1998. The growth on last year is phenomenal and what's encouraging us is that it's continued from the summer. The signs are all promising for the new year."

And does he have any resolutions?

"Well," he says sheepishly. "I tried to give up smoking but it didn't last very long - about half an hour in fact."

Next visit: 17 February