Summer roomnights
Making the most of the outdoors space and local countryside is obviously a given for country house hotels, and a common trick is to tag on extra days to conferences for activities such as clay pigeon shooting - which can be marketed as team-building exercises.
At Prestbury House near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, guests can take their pick from a list of activities, including wine tasting, falconry, barbecues, croquet and boules. The hotel also offers picnics to guests who go mountain biking on the Cotswold Way - and picks them up when they get bored.
If you don't fancy one of the shooting parties at the Red Lion Hotel in Redbourne, Lincolnshire, there's always the option of stopping over after doing a parachute jump at the local airfield.
Shooting, along with archery, is also on the menu at the 11-strong Brend Hotel chain in the South-west. The group offers a different entertainments programme for July to September and offers a more informal dining alternative for its summer guests. For the first time this year the group has released two different brochures - one with children on the front and one without.
One hotel that is used to catering for families is Calcot Manor in Tetbury, Gloucestershire. Alongside the family suites and rooms sits the Playzone, which caters for children from newborn to 16-years-old. The building, which is housed in a converted barn in the courtyard, is packed with toys and games, a cinema, studio equipped with Playstations, X-Boxes and computers for older children and qualified nannies for the younger ones.
It's no surprise that English Lakes hotels, with six hotels in and around the Lake District, offers its summer guests a wide range of watersports, alongside other pursuits such as climbing. And visitors to Gleneagles in Auchterarder, Perthshire, who tire of the shooting, fishing and off-road driving can brush up on their backhand at a tennis clinic given by former Wimbledon ladies singles champion Virginia Wade.
After a hard day rampaging around the country side those long summer evenings offer the perfect opportunity for a spot of hot air ballooning at hotels such as Cricket St Thomas in Chard, Somerset and those operated by Von Essen, which also hires out barges to its guests.
For urban hotels with less space to play with, it's a case of making the most of what you have. The recently opened Zetter in London's Clerkenwell, for example, has a climate-controlled glass roof that slides open automatically when the weather is nice, along with alfresco dining outside. Also in London, the Berkeley and Savoy have rooftop swimming pools and fitness centres, with the Berkeley's opening to the sky when the weather is good.
The good thing about summer, of course, is that there are so many events going on around the country that hotel operators can use to help fill rooms. There are great opportunities for cricket breaks - or even horse-racing breaks, in the case of the Elizabeth Hotel Group. Others, such as Cantley House hotel in Wokingham, Berkshire, work with the local tourist boards and market themselves on the back of local attractions - in its case Legoland and Thorpe Park.
Then, of course, there are the hotels that are pitched full tilt at the leisure market all year round, such as the Splash Landings Hotel at Alton Towers, which markets itself as "Europe's first water park hotel".
But where better to be at this time of the year than the Summer Isles Hotel in Achiltibuie, Ross-shire, admiring the view of the distant Isles while scoffing a summer fruit meringue roulade with treacle and Drambuie ice box pudding…
Last summer saw the launch of the Twenty20 Cup - a new fast-paced game of cricket played in just under three hours after work. With music, entertainment and all the thrills, spills, excitement and drama out on the pitch it's a great way to spend a summer's evening.
The Twenty20 Cup returns in July and Caterer has teamed up with its official business partner npower - one of the UK's largest suppliers of electricity and gas to businesses - to offer free tickets to a Twenty20 cricket match.
We've got three prizes on offer. Each prize is a set of six tickets (that's one for you and five for your clients or colleagues) for a Twenty20 match at the county ground of your choice.
To be in with a chance of winning one of the sets of tickets, all you have to do is answer the question below. Enter online at www.caterer-online.com (or, if you prefer, log on to the website, print out the entry form, and send it to Caterer & Hotelkeeper, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5AS.)
