A Generous Host + Good Friends + Good Venue = A Great Party

Every once in a while some generous individual decides to throw aparty for his or her friends, nothing too unusual about this you might think. But when your host decides to take over the whole hotel for a weekend and treat his friends to what is, in effect, a giant house party - that is pretty unusual. No small undertaking and I was very pleased to be entrusted to arrange a special birthday weekend for a very trusting Gliffaes guest. Planning started over a year ago to ensure that he could have every available room for his chosen date.

With every room booked by the host it means he is free to do as he wishes; play music, dance to a band, play games, watch a film - its up to him. The brief for this weekend was to make it relaxed and informal and for people to take their time over a couple of long slow dinners. To talk, to eat to listen to their music and to drink.

Friday night is always difficult with people having to leave work and rush to get ready for the weekend away. So we did not want to fix a time for dinner but  set up a buffet to run for a couple of hours. Chicken and vegetable curry was the order and the plates were licked clean, this was all washed down with a cask of real ale from the Breconshire Brewery. As the evening was fine almost everyone ate outside.





On Saturday evening the plan was to keep the same level of informality but up the food stakes a little. We kicked off with champagne and canapes and then tucked into a buffet consisting of ;









•    Roast leg of Welsh Lamb – carved in front of the guest by the chef. (served warm)
•    Thickly cut rare Rib of Roast Welsh Beef, Homemade Piccalilli.  (served cold)
•    Roast Sea Trout with Fennel & Lemon. (served warm)
•    Grilled Vegetable Brochette.  (served warm)
•    Herb Couscous. (served warm)
•    Warm New Potatoes.
•    Peppers stuffed with Pine Nuts, Spinach & Welsh Cheese.
•    Organic Green Salad
•    Carrot, Orange and Sesame Salad.
•    Summer Bean & Mint Salad
•    Homemade Bread

Puddings:

•    Strawberries with Elderflower Sabayon
•    Chocolate Roulade
•    Lemon Posset with a Tuille Biscuit 

Once again this was done outside but this time with a few rounds of , "Happy Birthday" thrown in for good measure. All in all a very happy weekend and one we enjoyed hosting as much as the guests seemed to enjoy their party. If you have a big occasion in mind and want some ideas on how to celebrate it - please do get in touch.

The Sun has finally Arrived

What a difference the weather makes to running a hotel in the country. The sun comes out and the first thing to be done is not sort out the parasols on the terrace but rush to the boiler and turn down the heating, that is the first sign of spring for an oil burning hotelier like me. The first proper sunny weekend of the year and it is a really great to see people outside on the terrace having long lazy lunches, children running around the gardens through the daffodils and even a very plucky young chap called, Isambard going for a swim in the river. Gliffaes seemed to be full of sun and laughter all weekend. We hosted two birthday lunches, a family reunion and a group of dedicated cyclists taking advantage of the hilly roads to prepare for the Etape d Tour under the guidance of cycling guru and journalist, Rob Penn. ( If you are a riding the Etape this year Rob is running two more training weekends from Gliffaes in June.)

More and more of the garden's shrubs, trees and flowers are coming out; magnolias, camellias, blue bells, wild cherry and still the daffodils keep going.

However, not everything is looking quite so rosy. The Icelandic volcano eruption has probably put paid to a whole party of Texans coming to Gliffaes for a wedding next weekend so I now have a hotel to fill in just five days. Anybody like to make me an offer for next weekend? Please do call.

An Inspector Calls

What value do you the hotel guest put on the A.A?

In the increasingly fast changing world of the web, the growth of social media (Twitter,  Facebook et al) and the advent of web sites like Trip Advisor, I would really like to know how you feel about old stagers; the A.A. To me, as a small hotelier, this once big player is far diminishing into the background in terms of marketing value. It still continues to produce a massive, doorstop sized guide, which lumps almost anywhere with a bedroom to let into one, far from easy to use, book. Does anyone really buy this massive tome at £16.99 when all that content is available for free on the web? The AA website is not found when searching for accommodation on the web and in the whole of 2009 the A.A. website sent me 178 visitors or 0.2% of my total traffic. Let's be generous and say that 2% of those visitors to my site convert to bookings, that then works out at about 3-4 bookings per year. This is not a good return on marketing spend.

What has prompted me into thinking this? Yesterday  Gliffaes was visited by the AA inspector ( not an overnight stay and he did not have a meal) who wanted primarily to know if we had put information on ironing boards and shoe cleaning in our guest information folder. He then asked about any improvements we had made since he was last here and I reeled off all the work we had done and he was generous enough to admit we had done a lot and it MIGHT improve our quality score. Hang on - we pay them - I am the customer, what are they doing to help drive business to us but how can they when they represent almost every hotel in the country? They carry out a quality grading identical to Visit Wales, ( the new Wales Tourist Board) and award the same number of stars based on your facilities. I am loathe to get into the debate about rosettes awarded for cooking but I am very keen to know if people use the rosettes to select where they might eat. 

All I can do is compare the efforts of the AA to other marketing groups. Today I spent over two hours with Jeffrey Epstein & Peter Jarvis of Best Loved Hotels and the difference  between the two organisations is chalk and cheese.  They are selective about who they work with thus sending  highly targeted visitors to my website viz. people who are in the market for what we offer at Gliffaes. They 'get' marketing and want to help you drive business with new and innovative ways to leverage the power of the internet. They were enthusiastic about Gliffaes and did not worry about ironing boards. They cost one and half time more than the AA but send me ten times more business. Do I take the plunge and ditch the AA?

Tell me how you feel about the AA stars and rosettes?

100% Pure New Wool

There is a wonderful tradition in Wales of blanket making, when you consider how many sheep there are it is not surprising, but the designs have changed little over time. That is until recently, a fantastic Welsh mill still weaving in a traditional  manner has really gone off on a tangent with some of their designs. The Melin Tregwynt mill is located in deepest rural Pembrokshire and when Susie and I first visited there some years ago we were determined to get some of the blankets to use at Gliffaes in the bedrooms.

We had our first delivery yesterday of 'spotty' blankets and cushions to go on the beds in rooms, 'Cottage 1' and 'Cottage 2'.  The blankets complement the new fabrics and soft furnishings Susie refurbished the rooms with during January beautifully. I am afraid that these photos do not really do the rooms justice but what a difference these vibrant & contemporary blankets make. These rooms also have new paintings hanging in them by local Welsh artists; Dionne Sievewright, Viv Luxton and Rhoda Partridge. The cottage rooms are big, warm and large enough to fit an extra bed in if you are coming to Gliffaes with children.

Useful links : Melin Tregwynt