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.

Mr Marriott's 12 Rules For Success

It is fair to say that they have served him well and I am sure that we can all take a leaf from this book:

1. Challenge your team to do better and do it often.
2. Take good care of your associates, and they'll take good care of your customers, and they'll come back.
3. Celebrate your peoples' success, not your own.
4. Know what you're good at and keep improving.
5. Do it and do it now. Err on the side of taking action.
6. Communicate by listening to your customers, associates and competitors.
7. See and be seen. Get out of your office, walk the talk, make yourself visible and accessible.
8. Success is always in the details.
9. It's more important to hire people with the right qualities than with specific experience.
10. Customer needs may vary, but their bias for quality never does.
11. Always hire people who are smarter than you are.
12. View every problem as an opportunity to grow.

Ladies & Gentleman, I give you a legend......

The concept of "Employee of the month" is not a new one, indeed here at Marriott, our hotels have been recognising our Associate's of the Month and subsequently Associate's of The Year since pretty much the very start of the organisation.

With growth in social media and the additional feedback on guest experience that it provides, we are never short of great examples of where one of our team has "gone the extra mile" for a guest and becomes a strong nomination for Associate of the Month. It would be unusual for me not to have at least ten names to consider each month, often with numerous and different nominations for each person.

But what about the guys that the customer rarely gets to see, I am talking about the team based in the "heart of the house." The guys that have got our back, every hour of every day! Meet Kamil; A true legend here at The Highcliff, responsible for all goods received at the hotel and managing our team of stewards. He is quite literally a legend, always there when you need him and ready to step up and do more without being asked whilst fulfilling a role that quite simply would bring much of the hotel to a halt if not executed with aplomb.

A worthy and overdue winner of Associate of the Month here at the Highcliff.

My top 12 reasons to visit Bournemouth in 2014

By no means the diminutive "what's on" list for Bournemouth, just the stuff that really floats my boat:

24th Feb. Rizzle Kicks - Bournemouth O2 Academy
Get down with the, down with the......

10th & 11th May Christchurch Food & Wine Festival

24th - 26th May. Bournemouth Wheels Festival. Wheels, power, elegance. From the team that bring you the world famous Air
Festival, this brand new event for 2014 will be Britain's
biggest wheels themed family event. Hot rods to
skateboards, F1 cars to racing bikes, monster trucks to
bmx, a fantastic long weekend is planned.
www.bournemouthwheels.co.uk

30th May - 1st June Powerboat P1 & Aqua X Jetski Championship

20th - 29th June. Bournemouth Food & Drink Festival
Ten whole days of foodie fun. The talented boys and girls
from The Highcliff Grill will be doing their thing in the
restaurant and down in the town square.
www.bournemouthfoodanddrink.co.uk

11th & 12th July. British Beach Polo Championships
Sandbanks Beach.

13th July. Bournemouth Pier to Pier Swim
Europe's biggest charity swim takes to the water.
www.bhf.org.uk/piertopier

28th - 31st August. Bournemouth Air Festival
www.bournemouthair.co.uk

6th & 7th Sept. Beaulieu Autojumble
A petrol head's nirvana, Europe's largest classic car swap
meet. www.beaulieu.co.uk

30th Oct - 2nd Nov. John Bishop, live at The BIC


Summer Specials

Every Sunday - Classic Cars On The Prom. An eclectic line up guaranteed every Sunday afternoon and right outside The Highcliff.
www.classiccarsontheprom.com

Every Friday - Friday night fireworks. The most fantastic and free
firework display is launched off the end of Bournemouth
pier every Friday night; 25th July - 22nd Aug. Enjoy a
sundowner and join the other Highcliff guest on our
lawn, for the very best vista point for this great show.

Massive Monday

That's what the recruitment industry call today - the first Monday back to work after New Year's Day.

Today is the most popular day in the year, not only to look for a new job, but also to look for opportunities to change career. More than one in four of us will have a complete career change in our lives and the break over Christmas and the New Year is fertile time to reflect and consider new opportunities.

So what about a move into the hotel industry? Sure, some of our roles are particularly technical, especially in the Kitchen, but front of house, we are always looking to recruit genuine people’s people, with a natural warmth and hospitality that training seldom provides. Here at The Highcliff we have a recruitment mantra: “hire for attitude, train skills.”

So, how about it? Be a part of "Massive Monday" and log on to Marriott.com/careers today and take a look where a Marriott journey might take you. From New York to New Delhi, from Brisbane to Bournemouth,.... especially in Bournemouth, we have great hotels looking for great people, right now.

Merry Christmas!

Wheels Festival 2014

On a bright sunny day back in October, I had the great pleasure to be stood in the Lower Gardens here in Bournemouth watching a high-speed pass by Michael Schumacher's former Benetton F1 car, followed by a procession that included Hot Rods, Low Riders, a Monster Truck, Super Cars and some great Beach Cruiser bicycles..... A great morning out for a 'Petrol Head' like myself and a fantastic insight into what we can expect from the three-day Wheels Festival in May 2014.

Arts By The Sea - 2014

Dates for next year's festival here in Bournemouth have now been confirmed, as 26 September - 12 October 2014.

Genius - thinking out of the box and onto the seas

The ice cream market here in Bournemouth is massive in the summer - over last weekend alone, just Saturday and Sunday; 70,000 ice creams were sold by the official beach vendors.

Over the years, this must have presented itself as an obvious opportunity to many a budding entrepreneur, wanting to grab a piece of this 99 action.

The challenge has been however, that the council owns and license all of the retail opportunities along the beach - the beach and promenade that they own.  I have no issue with this, as they do a phenomenal job of cleaning the beach every single night to present visitors with untouched golden sand every morning.

So, with all this said, for the creative thinker, there must be a way around this obstacle......  So, if you can't work from the beach or promenade,..... what about from the sea???

Genius!

Keeping it Indigenous

Our food philosophy here at The Highcliff is very much based around local produce, but only when it supports our sustainability principles and of course, when it is first and foremost great produce.

So here is a cracking new ingredient that will be making its way into our kitchen, on to the Highcliff Bar for our awesome bloody Mary's and on to our breakfast buffet.

Dorsetshire Sauce...  Quirky, cool and very much of the region - we love it!

Have hut - will travel

We are on the move...  

We are taking the Highcliff Hut on the road this summer, to launch #Streetfood, our very own "pop up"

street food concept.

First stop will be Bournemouth Town Hall Square, where we will be positioned for the entire 10 day duration of Bournemouth Food Festival.  Future gigs include the famous Bournemouth Air Festival, where you will find our hut positioned up on the West Cliff and then hopefully at a few more gatherings across the region during the summer.

The menu, as simple as it is, is still under wraps, but as with everything that comes out of the Highcliff Grill, you can expect a strong seafood element (sustainable of course) and a nod to some of the great gastro street food that the likes of Kerb in London have been doing a great job to promote.

Matt (Matt Budden - Exec Chef) and I have watched with interest the growth in pop-ups and the increase in street food culture that has developed over the last couple of years, nipping up to London from time to time to sample the food and soak up the atmosphere of this great movement. Now it's our turn to have a go and bring some of this foodie fun to Bournemouth and Dorset.

Engaging customers and Spotting new opportunities

I like to think that I walk around the hotel with my eyes open every day, thinking about and looking at what our customers see and experience, whilst trying to evaluate how we can commercially evolve our business to do more;  More, both financially and more, to engage our changing customer's expectations.

I always try to break down great customer experiences or smart ideas at other businesses, to consider if and how we could do that, or apply the principle laterally to our business.

I visited my local quality Chinese takeaway last night, possibly the most expensive takeaway within a fair radius, but good food, so worth it.
Recently, they have had a price hike right across their menu, adding a good 20% to a typical order, but I have stuck with them because as I said, the food is good, in fact the best in the area. 
On getting to the counter last night to pay my telephone ordered £32 bill, I was told “Oh, we charge £2 now for debit cards!" 
What followed was an uncomfortable exchange; because I just don't buy it. 
Running a business that deals in a volume of cash every day as I do, I would say "give me debit cards every time."  The real cost of dealing with cash; cashing up each shift, time spent banking, security firm cash collections and the genuine risk of theft, far out way what are the relatively small charges for the secure and audit tight payment process of accepting debit card payments.  So I don't get the logic and I don't appreciate passing this cost of doing business on to the customer.
I will take your pay hike, but I won't take such attempts to be clever with a stealth charge that far out ways the genuine cost.
So I will now be taking my regular, weekly, mid-week spend of between £28 and £35 somewhere else.


So, this morning I arrive early for my train to London at an unmanned station that serves some very smart conurbations in the Poole area.  With 10 minutes to spare before my train, I nip into the very smart gastro pub that sits proudly in the station car park, not 20 meters from the platform.  My plan, to get a takeaway coffee for the journey, knowing that all I will get on the train is sachet coffee.

I enter the pub and “result!"  There before me, stands a magnificent 2 stage espresso machine and smiling bar staff - I am in luck!  "A black Americano to go," is my polite request, which is met with an equally polite but very disappointing "sorry, we don't do takeaway coffee......but we have been thinking about it!"   Well, think a bit harder!!  This business has a phenomenal new revenue stream staring them right in the face and all they need to do is buy some paper cups and if they really want to make some money, invest in a sign.


So, whilst I know that neither of these examples apply to The Highcliff literally, there are some good lessons to be learnt about disengaging otherwise loyal customers and not missing the obvious opportunity under your nose.

It is easy to criticise other peoples businesses.  The important thing is to learn from such experiences and ensure that you are not in denial about similar instances in your own business.

Happy 86th Anniversary, Marriott!

On this day in 1927, a tiny new enterprise opened its doors at 10 a.m. in Washington, DC: a nine-stool root beer stand that was soon named The Hot Shoppe.

Who would have believed that this small business would be the start of one of the most successful lodging companies in the world and it all began with a root beer stand.  Founder J. Willard Marriott and his wife, Alice, got their young business off the ground by quenching people’s thirst during Washington D.C.’s hot, muggy summers. Good food and good service at a fair price became a guiding principle for Hot Shoppes restaurants--and for Marriott International as it grew.

Today, Marriott International has more than 3,800 hotels in 74 countries - including the wonderful Bournemouth Marriott Highcliff Hotel.

No monkeying around - the serious side of associate appreciation week

With the same kind of consistency as Marriott Burgers on the menu and Oatmeal on the breakfast buffet, you will find every single Marriott hotel around the world delivering their own Associate Appreciation Week this month.

"Putting people first" is a core value here at Marriott, something that is focused upon every single day, but Associate Appreciation Week allows us to go a little crazy - some might say bananas!

My welcome to AAW, from the Housekeeping team

here at the Highcliff - It's going to be a great week!

This has given me a great idea for a welcome to some of our younger guests in the summer season.....