It’s a cliché and obvious that over time things change. In the hotel business, customer change happens slowly but over time this change can have a dramatic impact on a hotel’s perception to potential customers and its successful trading. One of the most important changes affecting a hotel is the changing demographics of a hotel’s customers. Today, it’s a change that is happening very quickly.
As I read the newspaper today and see 5th April I cannot forget two significant events which are branded in my memory from 5th April 1982. First, the British military Task Force sailed from south of England to the south Atlantic with the aim of re-taking the Falkland Islands which had been invaded by Argentina and secondly, I walked through the doors of the privately owned Bruntsfield Hotel in Edinburgh as a fresh assistant manager to start my first real job after a few false starts
It started off in a small way 8 months ago and is now a major monthly discussion about all things Scotland on Twitter. So every month, on the last Wednesday between 9.00pm and 10.00pm (GMT), tune into Twitter and take part.
Not so many years ago it was expected that every hotel of a certain standard offered not only accommodation & breakfast but also lunch and dinner. Certainly even a mid-market hotel was expected to have a “dining room”; no doubt with starched white linen, formal menu structures, a service staff hierarchy and cuisine which had its heritage in classical cooking. The experience in restaurants on overseas holidays and in the many new restaurants opening in cities and towns resulted in customers becoming very knowledgeable of the high standard and experience that restaurants could offer and they were not finding it in many mid-market hotels. Traditional dining rooms in hotels declined in popularity which resulted in hotels meeting the change by reinventing their dining room as a hotel restaurant. Now even well run restaurants in many city hotels struggle to be profitable. Such restaurant’s days are numbered with the result that restaurant service in mid-market city hotels will decline.
Only 18 miles north of Edinburgh city centre is Scotland’s ancient capital of Dunfermline. This ‘auld grey toun’ of Dunfermline is at the heart of Scotland’s history. Dunfermline’s royal and monastic past dominates the town, which includes a royal palace, a twelfth century abbey (which is the final resting place of Robert the Bruce and the burial site of eleven other Scottish kings and queens), the restored 15th-century Abbot House and the cave in which St Margaret bathed the feet of the poor. King Malcolm Canmore of Scotland established his court after the death of Macbeth at the now ruined fortified tower in the heart of Pittencrieff Glen. Dunfermline was the birthplace of James I in 1394 and of Charles I in 1600.
