The Westberry Newsletter, Issue 2, January 2017
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017!
We hope you all had a relaxing Christmas with family and friends and recharged your batteries ready for 2017. All of us at the Westberry wish you and your family a very successful New Year filled with happiness and good health.
In December the hotel rooms were quiet but the restaurant was busy with Christmas meals and functions. This year we hosted one traditional Christmas party and one Oriental Christmas party — both were very successful and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. We received very positive feedback on both the quality of the food and on the service. All staff put great effort into making sure that the parties went well and without hiccups, and they put in an extra effort to make it a memorable event for every group. Each group received something special made for them to symbolise their group — for example, the Castle Holiday group received a castle (see picture) made by Sam: they were so impressed that they took it back to put in their office and promised to bring back again next Christmas!
Both to give everyone a break and to allow the necessary time for some major refurbishment work, we decided to close the hotel for three weeks from 23rd December. We all managed to have a break during the first week, but soon after Christmas some of us went straight back to work with our decorators in order to give the hotel a good facelift for when we reopen on 16th January. The work is going well, and we are grateful for our local contractors (Tom Fraser, Simon and Emma Akehurst, Paul Andrews, James Hull and Adam Dawe, all of whom have been working extra-hard in this race against the clock to ensure that everything is ready on time. While refurbishing the reception area, we discovered an old door, still intact, when removing the old facade (see picture). Adam suggested incorporating this new-found feature, and we agreed; in the next newsletter, we will show you what this has become.
As many people may be feeling a bit deflated in January we thought it might be a good idea to find a way to cheer people up, and ... the Chinese New Year is on 28th January this year! So, to celebrate the year of the Rooster, we are organising a Chinese New Year celebration with lots of good food and a live Karaoke competition (the Chinese and Oriental are quite hooked on this, and we are hoping that some of our family will be able to come and sing a few Chinese songs for you!). The flyer and menu can be found here. We hope you will be able to gather a few friends and family to come and join us on this occasion, so start practising your singing for a chance to win a free round of drinks for your table!
Once Fabrice, our head chef, is back from holiday, he will start planning the St Valentine’s day menu, and this year we will go for a full French menu to give this special date a proper setting. You will be able to taste authentic French cuisine from our French head chef to make the evening truly special. One lucky couple will receive this meal for free, and the winners will be announced as soon as we have picked the winner from our December and January feedback forms. We are still collecting feedback from our restaurant customers until the end of January, so if you dine with us do please fill a feedback form (even if you left feedback on a previous occasion – we are always trying to improve) and leave your contact details so that we can let you know if you have won.
That’s it for now from us, but if you are planning to celebrate Chinese New Year with us you might like to practise a few “Happy New Year” phrases in the languages that we can understand:
- 新年快乐 (Xīn nián kuài lè — Mandarin)
- 恭喜發財 (Kung1 hei2 fat3 choy4 / gōng xǐ fā cái — Cantonese / Mandarin)
- Chúc mừng năm mới (Vietnamese)
Happy practising!
Lệ Khanh & Simon
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