Hotels : Part 1

In our pre-baby lives, my wife and I spent many a weekend away in hotels. A few decades ago the idea of a couple checking into a hotel under the names Mr and Mrs Smith would have prompted a little snigger from the receptionist, as this was the favoured pseudonym for couples to carry on an affair. For a couple who genuinely are Mr and Mrs Smith, I'm glad that times have moved on as I embarrass easily.

To move off my point for just a moment, and to illustrate just how possible it is for me to get embarrassed, we bought the hotel guide called - ho ho - Mr & Mrs Smith and from it, booked the Strattons hotel in Swaffham (which truly is one of the best places you will ever find to spend a night; the hotel, that is, definitely not Swaffham, and you must like cats and poultry if you do decide to stay). Anyway, for saying that we'd booked it through Mr & Mrs Smith, you got a 'romance kit' which included a feather and some sensual massage oil. My face went the same colour as the Victorian red paint on the walls in their reading room when the kit was handed to me (as did Oliver, the son of the owners who was on reception that day). I'm clearly embarrassed by sex, and I apologise for being so classically English.

But, after that somewhat humiliating and perhaps unnecessary detour, back to my main point: we used to stay in hotels quite often. Probably every other month, sometimes more frequently than that. Now I should point out that this lifestyle equates to a not insignificant amount of disposable income, and for the record I'd like to point out that I don't have a not insignificant disposable income, at least not one that could sustain that many hotel stays in a year.

No, the reason was that Mrs Smith ran a small business called Search For Venues until our daughter was born. Search For Venues was, as its name would hopefully suggest, a venue finding company, specifically for corporate meetings and events. With running this type of business, hotels tend to fall over themselves to offer companies like Search For Venues either free nights in one of their properties, or rooms at a hugely-reduced rate, all of which we as directors of Search For Venues dutifully took up in the valid name of research.

Sometimes this would mean taking a tour around the hotel's meeting room suite, or having a drink with Michelle's point of contact at the hotel to discuss potential bookings, or in a couple of cases sitting through a dinner thrown for agents like Search For Venues and competitors to show off the hotel's party capability, in order to encourage you to book your client's Christmas party at that venue. I truly hope I never have the displeasure of enduring another Bee Gees or Blues Brothers tribute act as long as I shall live. In most cases though, the sacrifice was worth it just to be able to stay in a location you're perhaps not overly familiar with or have always wanted to go to, and in most cases you didn't have to endure anything at all. And it definitely bred a familiarity with a hotel which Michelle could relay onto clients.

But all good things must come to an end, and so it was for Search For Venues, which has been closed since March last year when Michelle started her maternity leave, and which puts an end to three years of hard work and effort, most of which was not rewarded. But we did get to stay in lots of hotels and we were only saying this weekend about how much we miss it. Irrespective of whether Search For Venues was put to rest or not, after having our baby we concede that staying in hotels is going to be less easy now, and certainly much more of a luxury than we'd previously regarded it.

Only this past weekend, Michelle and I were rueing the fact that we no longer have this flexibility in our lives any longer. To say that shouldn't imply that we regret having a baby, far from it, but it was just a big part of our lives before, and in a way - impracticalities and new financial restrictions aside - I wanted it to continue in order to encourage Seren to take an interest in perhaps the history and geography of this country. She's far too young to appreciate it right now, but as someone reminded us on Saturday, life is the sum of experiences, and like that person, I want our child to have memorable experiences too. We certainly don't want to offload Seren on to relatives and go away without her like some people do; she's the centre of our lives and she should be there in whatever we do.

And so we decided to book a few weekends away. We recently traded in some Tesco Clubcard vouchers for Hilton vouchers, which we hoped would make a difference to the price of the hotel stay, and we picked the shiny new Deansgate Hotel in Manchester. Having not paid full price for a hotel for ages, the cost of even a modest room was staggering, the rate no doubt loaded by the hotel's proximity to the city's shopping quarters.

A love of seminal Manc bands like Magazine, Smiths and Joy Division / New Order has always attracted me to the city, and I'd love to stay at the Radisson on the site of the Free Trade Hall - a significant Manchester location that witnessed the infamous Bob Dylan-turns-electic Judas concert, and, upstairs, the site of the first Sex Pistols concert in Manchester, organised by future Buzzcocks members Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto - but whenever we've been before we've stayed at the Lowry, a swish and modern property popular with celebrities (plus Tony Blair - he was in residence the last time we were) in Salford Quays. But previously we've stayed there either for free or for a paltry sum compared to the usual room rate, and this time couldn't really stretch that far. That said, the rooms there would have been excellent for Seren as there would be plenty room for a travel cot.

Space is the principal issue with taking a baby away. Seren's used to having her own room, which is instantly out of the question when you book a hotel room unless you pay double and take interconnecting rooms, or a suite where there is a lounge area. For the nights we were looking at, a suite would have set us back £360 per night, which is just out of the question. And so we just plumped for a Queen room and Seren will just have to sleep in the travel cot next to our own bed. Not ideal, and it'll probably mean an early night for us otherwise she'll get woken up.

It seemed like a straightforward enough process - find your hotel on the Hilton website, decide on the type of room, call a dedicated helpline, book it, then send on the Tesco vouchers so that they could apply the discount. Except that first of all it's weird in this day and age to book anything over the telephone, and secondly it proved anything but simple.

We knew that a Queen room could accommodate a double bed and a bed for a child, and therefore it could easily be surmised that this would also accommodate a travel cot as this is of course smaller than a single bed. When I spoke to the reservations department, they asked me how many adults were staying and how many children. When I said that we were bringing a child under one, and would be bringing our own travel cot, and that we'd settled on a Queen room, there was the silence from the call operator that is synonymous with 'my computer is telling me there's a problem'.

We knew they had availability as I'd checked online already. The problem was that the system was telling the guy that a child could not be accommodated in a Queen room, which we knew to be incorrect. He said it would 'probably' be fine, but that he couldn't guarantee it. At this I laughed sarcastically and said that I was hardly going to drive all the way there, baby in tow, to find out that she couldn't fit in the room. He responded cooly again with the fact that he couldn't guarantee it. I insisted that the room was definitely big enough, and he became quite flustered; he decided to put me on hold while he spoke to the hotel.

Fine, I thought, at least we'll know for sure. After a couple of minutes listening to a holding advertisement for Hilton Conventions ('Hilton Conventions...anything but conventional' was the sickening strapline), the guy came back on the phone and said 'I've spoken to the hotel and they want to speak to you directly,' which I thought was a bit odd. 'Is that okay?' I consented, confident then that I'd have it sewn up within a few minutes.

When he transferred me, it became obvious that they didn't want or need to speak to me, and he was just looking for a way to offload the call, as I was put through to the hotel reception and they didn't have a clue who I was or why he'd put me through. The receptionist transferred me to the hotel's group reservations team, who very helpfully confirmed that yes, a Queen room would be plenty big enough. I sighed with relief and asked if I could go ahead and book in that case; of course she couldn't - because I had Tesco vouchers I'd need to go back to the central booking line, and I was transferred again.

I had to explain the situation again which was frustrating and I also explained what I'd just been told by the hotel themselves; the very abrupt woman on the other end of the phone once again plugged all the information into the computer and again said that there was a problem – the room didn’t say it would accommodate a travel cot. I said again that the hotel had told me it could, and she very forcefully asked me if I had a name of the person I'd spoken to. Of course, I was so confident that the answer I had been given by the woman at the hotel was enough to enable me to get this booked that I'd neglected to take down a name. I was wrong. I said it was quite embarrassing that they didn’t seem to be able to co-ordinate things – I didn’t say it aggressively, but I said it with enough sentiment to indicate that I was pretty cheesed off with the whole thing.

This was 10.30, and I had a meeting at 11.00. The woman didn’t empathise with my criticism of the disorganisation at all, and just blurted that she’d have to call the hotel back, reminding me again at the chagrin of not taking a name. I resigned myself that this would at least get us the booking, but stated that I needed to be able to book it by 11.00. She murmured that it should be no problem, and that was it – she was gone. That was Monday. Today’s Wednesday and they still haven’t called me back.

Perhaps it’s because later the same afternoon I spoke to someone else, who was much more helpful and understanding and booked it smartly and promptly in about five minutes flat. Interestingly, when I explained that the hotel had confirmed that the room would be big enough for a travel cot he just matter-of-factly said ‘Okay, I’ll just make a note of that on the booking.’ This guy appeared to be American or Canadian, but I don’t know whether that means this time I was speaking to a US-based call centre (the previous lady had been Scottish, the previous guy Indian) but if I'm correct in my belief that Hilton have numerous call centres around the world, I'm appalled at the lack of consistency between them. Just a hunch.

My line manager, the fountain of knowledge and experience that he is, would liken this to the ‘Big Mac’ approach – no matter where you are in the world, a Big Mac will be made the same. It may taste slightly different, but you wouldn’t expect that in Milan they rest the patty on top of the bun whereas in Long Island it would be inside – it’s the same structure each and every time. Hilton don’t appear to have heard this wise nugget of corporate common sense.

Am I looking forward to our first hotel stay in almost a year? Not particularly. The booking process has left a sour taste in my mouth and the rigmarole of booking over the telephone rather than online has ensured I’ll never order Tesco Clubcard vouchers for a hotel stay again. I’m also not entirely confident, despite the firm confirmation of the person working in the hotel, that there’s not going to be enough room for a travel cot. Leisure events like this are supposed to be hassle-free; this wasn’t.

I could begin another moan here about the difference in service between large chains of hotels like Hilton or Marriott versus the warmth and attention to customer needs of independent hotels, but I’ll save that one for another day.