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Jane Pendlebury

In a new series - we recently spoke for five minutes with HOSPA President Robert Cook

Chief Exec at DeVere Village Hotels and – bearing in mind the upcoming long Jubilee Weekend – we asked him “Are Bank Holidays good for the Hotel Business?”


“This longer weekend where we effectively lose the Monday night is tricky: and so the packages that hotels offer have to be carefully tailored and the Food and Beverage (F&B) offering becomes increasingly important.


The trouble with the Bank Holidays is not the week-ends themselves but the loss of a business day the following week where the business world takes its time waking up after the holiday period.


The F&B offering can make a big difference to the Sunday night of a normal Bank Holiday where a hotel does it right. Those hotels that are ‘good at F&B’ should welcome a Bank Holiday week-end opportunity for both their in-house guests and local market.


These holiday breaks should not come as a big surprise – they are announced well enough in advance to put in some real transparent planning – after all we know which day Christmas is every year and that we will be serving turkey – so no need to keep re-inventing the wheel.


Revenue Management and Marketing become increasingly important in terms of judging the demand and the market – and setting sensible attractive rates for the leisure markets.


This longer weekend in some ways starts to look like a continental ‘holiday-bridge’ where the holiday is technically the Thursday and everyone takes the Friday off with it! This trend will come to the UK eventually.


However looking at this particular week-end coming up - based on our recent booking pattern and a straw-poll of some other hoteliers there does seem to be a late rush to get going again on the Wednesday 5th June – so the commercial business may be back sooner than some may have thought!”

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