BBC film ‘liberties' irk adelphi's owner

By Angela Frewin

Britannia Hotels is unhappy with the fly-on-the-wall documentary shown by the BBC last week which featured its Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.

Marketing director Duncan Stephenson said that the BBC had "taken liberties" and shown "a lot more than it should have done" in the first programme of the series, which showed hotel staff coping with the city-wide accommodation crisis that followed the IRA bomb scare at the Grand National.

He refused to comment when asked if he felt scenes of a room being auctioned at more than double the rack rate of £95, and mattresses laid out in function rooms being offered at £45 a night, gave an unsavoury impression of profiteering (Caterer, 6 November, page 25).

But Stephenson stressed that the scene that showed a couple who wanted to check out early being charged the full room rate reflected standard practice among hotels, unless 48 hours' notice had been given.

Eileen Downey, the general manager of the Adelphi, has said she will not comment until the series has run its course of eight weekly programmes on Monday nights.