Inside track: first impressions really do count in hotels, says Robin Hutson

First impressions of shabby modernisation betray the elegance of the past, says Robin Hutson

As an inquisitive hotelier, I like to think I have gained a decent knowledge of the various hotel offerings available throughout the UK today.

The vast range of accommodation, from budget inns and B&Bs to grand city centre hotels or country houses, appear to offer something for all tastes and pockets. Certainly, in the several decades that I’ve been in the business, I believe hospitality standards have in the main improved across the board. That was, until on a recent trip to a spa town where I found myself booked into a hotel that would have been one of the grand dames of its day. Sadly, it was long past its heyday of the Regency and Victorian periods when these hotels sprang up, when there was the vogue for ‘taking the waters’.

It was genuinely terribly sad to experience first-hand the shocking state of this hotel, from what had once been a pinnacle of opulence and design.

To see its marble-pillared salons and three-metre grand staircase now suffering from decades of poor maintenance, fitted with a patchwork of mis-matched carpets and hosting a myriad of ill-conceived modern interventions, it was clear that the property was reduced in every aspect to its lowest possible denominator.

As we know, first impressions are so important. Well, we were greeted by a scruffy, unmanned main entrance that had been randomly plastered with temporary plastic signage informing today’s unfortunate guests of all the things they either must do or must not do. Not much of a welcome!

The original, hand-crafted solid mahogany revolving front door had been butchered in more recent times using soft wood. The reception was full of unnecessary detritus, more ugly signage everywhere, tacky ornaments and uncleared afternoon tea plates still littering the lobby hours later.

Our bedroom reminded me of a bedsit I shared with a mate when I was 18 in the wrong part of Shepherd’s Bush. Given that comparison, I suppose I should have been grateful for the cheapest, minuscule ‘complimentary’ bathroom sachets present in our room.

I am certainly sympathetic to the staffing challenges we all face, and I don’t want to be accused of just being a grumpy old man, so I won’t dwell on the robotic, unsmiling check-in, the apparent lack of staff training or the absence of any obvious supervision. By now I am sure you have got the picture. We had been booked in by friends who were embarrassed and nonplussed by the fall from grace of this previously grand hotel. I felt for them. But the 24 hours I spent there gave me time to reflect upon the changing fashion and style for what we now have come to know as a staycation.

I couldn’t help myself imagining the elegance of the place in the days when the carriages of the rich and famous would have arrived at that very same front door, complete with their entourage of ladies’ maids, valets and chauffeurs, to be greeted by a sharply dressed doorman and ushered to their suite of rooms for their health-giving seasonal break. This would have represented the pinnacle of sophistication, status, wealth and success for any arrivals.

Of course, we live in different times now, and thank God we do in many ways, but as we continue to modernise the hospitality offering, I do hope we can still strive for a little of the care and elegance that our industry was built on and that are, to me, the pillars of great hospitality.