Liz Smith-Mills, hotel inspector extraordinaire was the star of our recent event “Confessions of a Hotel Inspector,” which was sponsored by Champneys. With a wealth of experience as a senior hotel housekeeper at prestigious hotels around the world, Liz’s expertise has been recognised with a hotel CATEY award, which is the hospitality industry’s equivalent to an Oscar. Liz’s far reaching knowledge in the industry made her an obvious choice when the AA were looking to increase the team of hotel inspectors.
Liz started the fabulous evening with this hilarious video from the British comics French & Saunders.
Unfortunately, everything you see in this video has happened at some point in some hotels. Thankfully we can safely say not in our Maiden Voyage approved hotels, where cleanliness is just one part of our thorough hotel inspection.
Liz continued throughout the evening to recount hilarious stories from her many years in the hotel industry and shared bloopers such as this menu typo found in an Australian hotel.
With these stories shared on what not to do in the hotel business, Liz also had some top tips to keep you clear of germs and bites when staying in a hotel:
- Always, always wash the cups in your room before using them.
- Keep your suitcase as far away from the bed as possible (to reduce the risk of transference of bed bugs)!
- If you find spots of blood on the sheets that is a sure sign of these pesky little critters so ask to be moved.
- Tidy your things away that you are not using.
The evening cumulated in networking, food and drinks with 60 amazing professional women, all of whom will be using Liz’s top tips to avoid hotel room horrors!
We’re lucky at maiden-voyage.com to work with Liz, one of the industry’s best, so rest assured if she has inspected your female friendly hotel you can sleep easy knowing that it’s spotless.
Let us know if you’ve experienced any hotel rooms that were clearly not up to scratch and what you did to get it resolved.
Further Reading
Humour is an international language. The world’s biggest selling comedy franchises are Mr Bean and Benny Hill who owe their successes to the power of slapstick and saucy seaside postcard humour. I am not suggesting that you adopt a funny walk into a business meeting and emulate Monty Python but there are a few simple tips I have learnt along the way about how to use humour and break the ice.
Laughter is universal and whatever the culture, there is always something funny for you to communicate about. Food is a particularly popular subject as regional delicacies vary. Sheep’s eyes may be every day fayre in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, and frog’s legs a delicacy in France but we Brits are famous for our reserve when it comes to menu choices. Maybe it’s time to introduce your overseas guests to the delights of jellied eels or whelks?! Not so weird now are we? Next time you are presented with something unpalatable by your foreign hosts, have the names of a few unusual British food delicacies up your sleeve and threaten to return the favour when they pay you a return visit.
Once you are in the boardroom it is best to be cognizant of your surroundings and avoid fussing. Nobody takes a fiddler seriously. Look like you know what is going on even if you do not have a clue.
One of my favourite ‘laugh out loud’ visual comedy sketches takes this to a whole different level. It is from the film ‘Johnny English Reborn’ with Rowan Atkinson playing a hapless secret agent who gets everything wrong. He attends a meeting around a boardroom table and grapples with the height of his chair which first goes first up and up and then down and down until he almost disappears from view with side splitting effect borrowing heavily on his Mr Bean persona! Let this be a lesson to us all – sit where you are sat, don’t play with knobs (inanimate or otherwise…) and engage. Even if you don’t actually understand a word they are saying you can pick up a lot by nuance – anger, frustration, agreement and pleasure.
In the UK we like to boast the most ‘intellectual’ humour with satire at its core. Every culture will have its own version of satire which pokes fun at the news and challenges the system.
How you tell ‘em could make or break a deal. Do your homework if you want to be politically or geographically relevant. Check out what you can and cannot get away with and unless you are certain that a well-placed anecdote will bring a smile to the face of your hosts, leave it out!
Remember that culture is a major reflection of the society you are doing business with so as more women are sitting on boards and occupying powerful roles in public and political life our voices are increasingly heard and (maybe) understood. This results in more representation overseas and we now have to adapt to ensure that our female presence is not undermined or trivialised. Even more importantly we do not want to put women in less open societies in jeopardy.
Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, does a great job of combining her power with a twinkle in her eye! She commands respect on a global leadership platform and there is very few references to her appearance when it comes to the media. My guess is that she uses her humour amongst her peers to equalize her status and draw attention to the issues she wants to raise.
A sense of humour is not a given, and then being able to communicate with humour across the boundaries of language and culture is an even bigger challenge for men as well as women. Taking on board the simplicity of visual humour like slapstick is not going to win you any prizes at the next international board meeting but watching and listening instead of looking at your mobile will ensure that you stay in the room. Social media crosses boundaries but will never replace the art of visual and verbal communications. Even if you do not have time to fully learn the lingo, research what your hosts or visitors laugh about in their country as humour can always be shared.
Lynne is the founder and chief executive of Funny Women and the new workplace brand. HERlarious. Follow her on Twitter at @funnywomenlynne
Further Reading
Female business travellers are on the increase and the good news is, in the main there are plenty of great city hotels for us to choose from. So why is it that so many still don’t have the foggiest about how to win our loyalty? Here are just some of the hideous things that hotels do to us every day.
1. Give us non-removable coat hangers
Not because we are too intellectually or physically challenged, or too short to navigate our clothes into the wardrobe, but because we like to hang our dresses in the bathroom so that the creases fall out. Have you ever considered how frustrating it is for us to try and hang a coat-hanger, without an actual hook, anywhere except its intended place? And no, really, we won’t pinch them!
2. Give us a push button hairdryer
The average time it takes to dry our hair to perfection is around 15 minutes using our high-voltage, salon-standard, ceramic, super turbo-charged gadgets at home. The reality often is that when we stay with you we have to wrestle a hairdryer on a 60 cm leash from the back of a drawer and operate it by permanently pushing in a button, only to find that it generates little more than a puff of tepid air. Needless to say, we resemble nothing like perfection and we’ve lost the circulation in our hand too.
3. Announce our room number to all and sundry
We shouldn’t have to explain this, but really, man or woman, please don’t say our room number out loud , discreetly circle it on the key card and we’ll repay you by not asking for another room.
4. Dress us up to look like Hong Kong Phooey
Yes! We are talking about robes designed for 7ft tall, 150kg men that we have to wrap around us three times, the belt hangs somewhere down by our knees and we have to roll the sleeves back four or five times just to get our hands out!
5. Invade our privacy
On a recent visit to a well-known UK spa, a gentleman brandishing a glass of hot water with a lemon floating in it let himself into my room without so much of a cursory knock. A strange thing to do and he looked more than a little surprised to find somebody in there – what was he really up to?
6. Give us combined bathing products
It might cut-it with the boys, but please keep it well clear of us. We spend time and money looking after our tresses and a combined hair and body wash won’t be going anywhere near them.
7. Put us somewhere inappropriate
On the ground, floor, in an annexe, at the end of a long, windy corridor, or right next to the lifts. Just a nice simple room, that we can feel comfortable walking to after a client dinner will do perfectly.
8. Take forever to serve us
It’s bad and boring enough dining alone in a restaurant and dealing with those around us (who are even more uncomfortable with our solo dining dilemma and the fact that we have read the words off the menu), besides the obvious question of “where do I lay my eyes”, . We’d just like a quick dinner – in and out so that we can get on with our evening.
9. Inflict Spaghetti Carbonara on us
OK, its not that we have anything specifically against Spaghetti Carbonara, but we prefer not to have to choose from uninventive, high-carb, meaty room service menus. Give us some light, healthy options, delivered hot, and call us before you deliver so that we don’t do the ‘bathroom- robe- should I/ shouldn’t I’ jiggle and you will spare us a trip to the deli before checking-in.
10 Charge us an arm and a leg for Wifi access
The reality is that women like to talk, and if you are lucky we will talk about you. Aside from the fact that we will be busy multi-tasking; shopping, Skyping with the family and sending the odd work e-mail , if you are doing something well we might check-in on Foursquare or Facebook or Tweet about your excellent customer service. So please don’t charge us to give you some free PR.
Are these your worst nightmares ladies, or do you have more to add? Share your stories with us below.
Carolyn Pearson, Founder of Maiden-Voyage.com