The adventure continues:  

All good things must come to an end.  After 3 great year's at The Highcliff and 21 brilliant year's with Marriott, The Highcliffhotelier is no longer, but long-live the HotelAnorak:

http://hotelanorak.blogspot.co.uk/

I hope to see you over there!

Kind regards


Andrew

Bournemouth Food Festival

We are officially "On tour!"

Celebrating a Quarter Century of service

In the modern business world, "a job for life" is most certainly a thing of the past, which is why i believe that exceptional length of service is a real badge of honour.

I was delighted to set up a little suprise celebration for our Night Manager - Ian Gallanders this morning, to recognise the 25th anniversary of the day that he joined Marriott Hotels.

A whole quarter century ago today, Ian joined our Swansea hotel as a Conference & Banqueting Porter from where he move on and up the ranks, taking in the Security department and then into rooms division, before coming here to the Highcliff as Night Manager some 12 years ago.

Congratulations Ian - an awesome thing to celebrate and I hope that you make the most of the truly fantastic benfts of being a member of Marriott's very exclusive and very special Quarter Century Club!

Less than 5 weeks to go

The Bournemouth season has a brand new curtain raiser in the form of The Wheels Festival.

Over the next few years I believe this three whole days of wheels based indulgence will be as big as our awesome Air Festival. In the same way that there are bragging rights associated to having "been there," at Goodwood's first Festival Of Speed, I honestly think this first Wheels Festival will be the start of something very special.

Happy Birthday Mr Marriott

Happy Birthday Mr Marriott.

I consider myself to have been very fortunate to have had three fantastic role models whilst growing up, in my father and two wonderful grandfathers; three very different men, with different perspectives on life, from whom I respectively had three great lessons in;  Entrepreneurship, Work ethic and Family values. I may not have overtly recognised that I carried those values close to me, but I now recognise that this is why joining Marriott felt like coming home. I joined the company to gain the experience of a new opening and then hopefully move on to my ultimate desire, to run my own business - that was 20 years ago and the culture of this business is what has kept me and many more like me here. That culture is all about one man - Mr Bill Marriott

At 82 years old today, he remains the single most powerful influence on our culture.
I had the huge pleasure of being invited to dinner at his home a few years ago with a group of colleagues........  Now, we were all staying together in a hotel in Bethesda, so it would have been so easy for Mr Marriott to simply attend a dinner that we were already having as a group in the hotel, but it was clearly very important to him that we were invited into his home, to be personally welcomed and hosted by himself and his wife Donna – That single gesture absolutely reinforced for me the values of our company and the importance of putting our people first.

Happy Birthday Mr Marriott

Let the sun shine

Great weather for business

20 degrees in mid March; I am loving the weather at the moment, everyone is happy, I get to spend my days off at the beach hut with my children, but more exciting than all that - the UK looks like a great option for an Easter break and that is great news for UK PLC and of course, for my business.

Until two weeks ago, you would have been forgiven for believing that the whole of Dorset was under water and the last thing you would have been thinking about would have been a family stay here during the Easter break.

Fortunately - just as we hit the traditional booking window for the Easter fortnight, the sun is out and plans to visit UK short break destinations are being hatched up and down the country.