The Westberry Newsletter, Issue 7, June 2017
Hotel bookings in May were significantly up compared to April, I’m very pleased to report. We were happy to see many of our former guests returning from other parts of England, Scotland and the Isle of Man. There were also many first-time guests who said that they were impressed with the hotel facilities and service and would be recommending us to their friends and families. But we also had a few unfortunate incidents, including one in which some guests used the kettle supplied in the room to boil milk for their child; unfortunately they burned it so badly that we lost the kettle, and did not realise that this had happened until after they had left. Then the bank holiday weekend came with a full hotel on the Saturday night which of course we thought was good news, until we discovered that two of our downstairs bedrooms had been flooded during the torrential storm the night before. 
We did the best we could to pump the water out of the two rooms, but unfortunately we had no other rooms into which to move the guests, and they very graciously agreed to occupy the storm-damaged rooms for which we thank them very much indeed. The storm was spectacular to watch, but we were horrified to discover that it had flooded part of our function room on the ground floor, the whole of the basement including a downstairs meeting room, and two of our ground-floor bedrooms. During this difficult time, we are extremely grateful for the support of Mid Cornwall Brokers who were very quick in responding to our call and who arranged for a professional disaster recovery team to come in to help over the bank holiday weekend. We are also very grateful to Sue (one of our managers), to our local builder Simon Akehurst, to electrician James Hull and to plumber Tom Fraser, all of whom turned up early to help make the place safe and remove water from the floor (several hundred gallons in total). Now all of these rooms have been ripped out to dry and some will be out of action for some time yet. To indicate just how severe the water ingress was, see the photograph of one of our light fittings, still (somehow) miraculously working when the photograph was taken.
We’ve just received an invoice from Booking.com and found that their commission for May was almost £2000, which for a small hotel such as ours is very very high. As the majority of our bookings in May came from Booking.com, this means that our profit margin is much lower because for these bookings we have to pay 20% VAT and a further 15% to Booking.com, so only 65% of the notional income is left to pay for staff, linen, utilities, breakfast, etc. It is understandable that when people come to a new place that they don’t know for the first time, Booking.com will be a very useful site to help them search for accommodation, but we would be very grateful if those who have stayed previously, or who know the area already, would make an effort to book directly with us so we don’t have to pay out too much commission. Our web site (www.westberryhotel.com) is already geared up to accepting direct bookings, but we plan to revamp it in the near future to make it more user and mobile friendly.
The Royal Cornwall Show has brought us both joy and tears (from laughing and crying). Dennison road was finally re-opened so that our guests could make their way to the show without too much trouble. But one of our guests asked for his show entry pass to be sent to our hotel in his name without giving us warning, and the booking was made through an agency so we didn’t know the name of the guest. When the letter arrived, on discovering that the addressee was unknown to us, we put the letter in the bin. Only when the guest asked us late at night for the letter did I realise that it had been meant for him. So at midnight my manager Sue, I and the guest were all rummaging through the two massive hotel bins in the pouring rain looking for this letter. Despite our best efforts, the letter was nowhere to be found, so the guest had to talk his way into the showground in the morning (we hope he was successful !). Our hotel, like most hotels in this area, was fully booked for the show dates, and we were sorry to have to turn a number of potential guests away. What made this worse was that we then found that some guests who had booked through Booking.com did not turn up, and when we tried to charge their credit card it was not authorised. So we’ve lost the income from these rooms, as it was too late to resell them. We would ask that guests be a little more responsible when booking rooms, and if their plans change so that they no longer require the rooms, would they please inform the hotel so the rooms can be released for sale to others. If we cannot succeed in persuading guests to respect this simple courtesy, then we will have to insist on taking all payments in advance, something we do not wish to have to do.
The restaurant side has been extremely busy — so much so, in fact, that some evenings we unfortunately been forced to turn people away because we didn’t have suffiicient front of house and/or kitchen staff on duty to provide the high level of service that our customers are entitled to expect. The problem is that we often don’t get many bookings in advance, so if a staff member is sick or cannot come for some reason, we don't necessarily bring in extra staff to cover if advance bookings are very light. Then, if a large number of people suddenly turn up looking for tables at the same time, we can only accept as many as we know we can serve properly, which is a shame as we would like to accommodate everyone if possible. So another plea (I know, this newsletter is full of them !), please give advance notice of restaurant bookings if you possibly can, so that we can ensure that we have adequate staff on duty to ensure that all customers receive first-class service. Incidentally, it was very touching to see how many of our local customers who saw our last newsletter then made an effort to visit our restaurant to support us — we are extremely grateful to them. Last Sunday was the first return in 2017 of the Sunday Carvery, and we were delighted to see some returning guests who used to come to our carvery previously and who preferred the traditional (Western) Sunday lunch. All received good food and service on the day, so we hope there will be more people joining us for next month's Carvery (Sunday 2nd July).
This month we were pleased to be able to make the donation of a Sunday lunch voucher to Dan Puckey who is organising the SummerFest event at Bodmin College to raise money for Little Harbour Children’s Hospice, Dementia UK and Bodmin College’s sensory room for students with learning difficulties. The SummerFest event will be on 24th June, and we hope it will be a great success.
Lệ Khanh & Simon
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