Foreign Perspectives

One of the hassles in the hotel trade is that people seem to be booking their holidays later every year so it’s really hard to plan.

For example, a week ago we had hardly anyone booked for the coming week yet now we’re virtually full. Not only that but several of the bookings which are filling us up aren’t the overnight stays that you normally expect from late bookings but quite chunky ones of three days to a week.

Now obviously we don’t want to be running out of stuff but on the other hand we don’t want to have massive stocks of perishables that we’d end up throwing out. Therefore, we find ourselves needing to do a spot of restocking tomorrow (it’s a public holiday today so that’s out).

The other problem that exists locally is that many hotels close very promptly for the year in just a few weeks or so. That’s handy for us since we stay open but I suspect that there’s a lot of last minute attempted booking going on that just ain’t happening because the hotels being sought are closed (although, funnily enough, not all are closed on the reservation systems, so beware!).