Blog

Unlike running a manufacturing company or an accounting practice or an airline, in the hotel business everybody’s an expert.

Years ago when I was working for the former Intercontinental Hotel Group we used to have a rule when we travelled that if anybody asked, “Who do you work for?” on a plane, we would always answer, “The International Coco Corporation of Papua New Guinea” on the basis that, the chances of you ever meeting anybody who came from Papua New Guinea was unlikely, and even if you did, to the best of my knowledge there is no such thing as the International Coco Corporation. But, tell them you work for a hotel company and you can guarantee that during the next four hours of the flight, you would be regaled with stories about how they had the worst experience of their life in such and such a place and they got their laundry boiled somewhere else and their wife’s best friend’s cousin’s boyfriend’s niece had a holiday job in the kitchen of your hotel in Barcelona and did you know him? The International Coco Corporation seemed like a better bet.

All of that said, people get pretty emotional about hotels and long may that last. When the Savoy first opened two centuries ago – two centuries, can you believe that? – it’s main claim to fame was that this was London’s first reputable hotel where you could go to sleep in the peace of mind that you weren’t going to get mugged, assaulted or robbed. Hotels in those days were more like hostels. How far we’ve come.

So what’s Purple Hotels all about then? Well, if you’ve come this far you’ve probably read the ads and the website and you know that it’s wrapped up in ‘a lot of what you want and nothing you don’t need’, and they’re ‘low cost hotels with a touch of cool’ or ‘a real hotel for the price of an inn’.

But what’s cool?

Herewith an initial list of cool things that that might help nail this deeply philosophical question.

Cool things:

• Champagne for two in McDonalds with your Egg McMuffins for breakfast.
• Ladies wearing men’s shirts with double cuffs and cuff links
• Black linen suit, white open-necked shirt, no socks (possibly summers only)
• Small expresso’s, like they were meant to be
• Silver jewellery
• Dancing in restaurants where you’re not supposed to but the music’s just so good…

Our definition of cool is pretty easy. It’s rooms that you’d be happy to live in were they in your home, food that you want to eat rather than have to eat because there’s no choice, music that makes you feel good, and service with a sense of humour.

What is it about the hotel industry that equates stuffy with service? It doesn’t have to be that way.

On Rooms

Like you, I’ve been staying in hotels for more years than I can remember and like you, I think it’s actually pretty fun. Also like you, I’ve had my pet hates over the years – chief amongst them was, “How do you turn all of the lights off in this room?”

You would go round the room and turn everything off but there was always one light that defied being turned off. You tried every switch available at the bedside, and it still wouldn’t go. So you got up, traipsed round the room, flicked every other switch and finally, you got the right combination of switches that turned all of the lights off by which point of course you couldn’t find your way back to the bed without stubbing your toe.

Other hotel hates included playing the, “How do you find where they’ve hidden the laundry bag game?” I’m thinking, ‘why can’t they all put it in the same place?’

Pet hates? Pet likes? Things that drive you crazy? Post here

On Restaurants and Bars

There’s a phrase used in the hotel world called “Food and Beverage”. It’s a department, like rooms is a department. To me it’s got all the passion of big pants, or pullies that your Great Aunt knitted for you when you were a kid. It just conveys a passionless feel about something that actually is very sensuous. Food and drink should always be a pleasurable experience and that means it’s got to be made with care and even a little bit of love.

In the chef-obsessed world in which we live, let me kill a few myths and lay down a few home truths as I see them.

In hotels like Purple, where we’re limited service, low-cost; we don’t have chefs; we have cooks. Chefs are the Sergeant Majors of the hotel world. They make a lot of noise, bully bunches of renegade people into doing what they want, all for a good cause, and it has to be said, have a fairly inflated view of their own self-importance.

Cooks on the other hand, are the infantry commanders, they just get things done. We are fortunate in this country that we have such a well-developed and reliable food chain that it’s possible for hotels like ours to have a lot of preparation work done upstream so that cooks in the restaurant can concentrate on the finishing and assembly of dishes rather than preparation from scratch, and as a consequence, we deliver really good food at pretty keen prices.

Like just about everyone else, we are concerned with nutritional value, food miles and provenance, but if you think that this has become a bit ‘faddy’, I have to say I wouldn’t disagree. Having a label on a steak that points out that this steak came from a bull called Eric who lived in a field by the river on a farm with a Hereford postcode is probably more information than you can usefully deal with.

Menus are getting lighter and smaller as we change our eating habits away from the traditional three meals to more of a grazing mentality. The one meal that is not for grazing, in my view, is breakfast. It’s got to be wholesome and it’s got to be hearty.

Most of us don’t have a full breakfast at home because the work week gets in the way so enjoy the hotel experience and have a proper breakfast.

We’re getting rid of the black pudding and house brick, hash brown potatoes throughout Purple and we’re putting in a really good buffet. Tasty drinks, fresh fruit, yoghurts, charcuterie and at least two different types of tortilla (Spanish omelettes if you prefer) and Lavazza coffee everywhere.

(Click here to download the menu).

What we’re setting out to do at Purple is to build a really good business where customers and staff alike have fun whilst they go about their business.

Finishing where I started, everyone in the hotel business is an expert, and that includes you. You have plenty of opportunities in the how did we do cards to tell us, well, how we did. What I hope this little rant will do is give you an opportunity to share your ideas, vent your frustrations, float some thoughts, as wacky as you want, and join the Purple nation.

This blog will be updated monthly and I look forward to talking with you on a regular basis and, I hope, seeing you at one of the 11 Purple hotels across the UK very soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 09:00 am and is filed under Purple Nation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.