The “voice”
of
independent accommodation providers

Joy and Eve stood outside the cafe, saying goodbye, and promising to meet up again soon, before they each went their separate ways.

Joy checked her watch, she had more guests coming in later, but there were not expected until early evening.  She decided that on the way home she would call in and see Fred in the Garage, and then she would go into her local Tourist Information Centre and introduce herself.

Joy pulled into the garage and saw Fred walking across the forecourt in her general direction.  She steeled herself to stand her ground.  Fred caught sight of her and waved.  She smiled and got out of the car, hoping she would not have a battle on her hands to get her car fixed.    Fred waited for her to walk over to him and to her surprise he said “look, about the other day, you caught me in a bad mood, another customer is trying to tell me I sold him a car with clutch problems, but I know he has misused the car.  I recall a mate of mine who trades cars saying that the beauty of selling to a business is that they can’t come back to you if something goes wrong.”

“I haven’t misused my car, perhaps if you have a look at it, you will recognise the problem and you will see that it can’t be anything I have done”.  Fred nodded, “yes, let’s book it in, don’t worry, I’m sure I can sort it out for you, I do value my customers really.”

Joy wondered if she should tell Fred what she had learned from Eve, but decided not to say anything.  She was not sure whether Fred would give her an invoice but she decided to wait and see, she could always argue later if she needed to.

Joy left the garage and drove towards the car park nearest to the Tourist Information Centre, she hadn’t checked the opening times, so she hoped she was not going to pay for parking, only to find the door locked.  Fortunately the TIC was open, Joy went up to a counter where two girls behind the counter were deep in conversation.  As she approached they both turned and smiled.

“Hello, I’m Joy Appleby, I have just taken over Sunfair B&B from the previous owner.  I have just come in to introduce myself and to let you know that I am accepting guests”.

“Oh, Hi there” replied one of the two girls, “I’m Mandy, actually we can’t pass guests on to you unless Sunfair is in our brochure”.  “Oh” said Joy, taken aback “how do I get Sunfair in the brochure?”

You can’t for this year, next year’s will be printed later this year.  You can go on our website though for a fee, here is a list of the rates”.  Mandy handed  Joy a leaflet.

Joy looked at the website, she was quite shocked to see how much it would cost her to advertise through the TIC, then she noticed something else “it says here that I must be Visit Britain or AA graded”.

“Yes, that’s correct, we must make sure that all the properties in our brochure have been vetted, we don’t do it ourselves so we rely on Visit Britain or AA gradings”.

Joy wasn’t graded, she didn’t think the previous owner was, and she hadn’t really thought about it.  She would have to go on the internet when she got home to find out how to apply for a grading.  She wondered what level she was, she suspected she was probably as good if not better than most of the 3 Star places she had stayed in, in the past.  Joy wondered whether most guests expected properties to be graded, or whether most guests didn’t care.  She wasn’t sure, and neither was she sure whether it would be better to apply to Visit Britain or the AA.  Joy hoped that she would have a better idea once she had studied their websites.  As Joy drove home she felt a little afraid of what to expect if she applied to join.  She had watched a television  programme a couple of times called “The Hotel Inspector’ and she knew that someone would check in posing as an ordinary guest.  She didn’t like the thought of that and wondered if it would be better to wait until Sam was with her.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 20th, 2010 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Contract. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.