Hello Table Talk Members!
From the early part of this year I have been blogging. I really enjoy it and often spend time sharing the happenings of the hotel with lots of different readers and yesterday, published a blog about an incident in the hotel that caused my staff a great deal of distress.
This is not a promotion of my blog either by the way - but you can read about the entire incident via the link if you'd like to.
http://hotelterravina.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/journalistic-scam-is-scuppered-at-hotel-terravina-with-the-help-of-a-national-magazine-and-some-great-detective-work-by-the-hotel%e2%80%99s-extended-team/
What happened?
Basically a woman posing as a journalist for a prestigious national magazine had an overnight stay at the hotel and got drunk, propositioned staff and a whole lot more, in the name of her 'research'.
Unfortunately I wasn't there on the evening in question but when I arrived the following morning (and discovered the events of the night before) I immediately sensed that there was something not quite right. So, I put a bit of a detective hat on and uncovered the truth.
After some research of my own I first contacted the Editor of the magazine that she'd claimed to be working for, along with the NUJ who all confirmed they had not heard of her. This was of course not a total surprise but to some degree dictated what the next course of action would be when it came to 'check out' time.
We confronted the imposter and not surprisingly when she realised the game was up she sheepishly scarpered, leaving without paying.
Now while this by itself is not unusual I've been getting a lot of comments from people within the industry who have experienced similar things and even journalists who not surprisingly felt this was detrimental to their professions.
So, I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on the incident (as well as any experiences you've had) as despite seeing much over my many years as a hotelier, this particular behaviour was probably the worst I have ever seen in over twenty years.
Thanks for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Nina Basset
Hotel TerraVina, New Forest.
Hello Peter
Thank you for your comments- indeed I am very aware we are not the first and nor sadly will we be the last. However, we do use a bona fide PR agency and we have enoyed welcoming hundreds of journalsts to both Hotel du Vin when we co owned it and TerraVina- we are very pro journalists and completely agree that they can help a business in a hugely positive way.
My reason for writing about it on my blog, is firstly because I was incensed that she had tried a scam with so little fore thought, planning, style or panache and secondly because I think it is an interesting topic for hoteliers, especially those who are not perhaps so PR aware and who may well have been caught out by similar scams.
We didn't actually get caught ,as after her first credit card was declined, we insisted she pay by another means- I don't think this was a pre planned scam at all, more that in a drunken stupor the couple in question thought it would be fun to pretend to be journalists- what was upsetting and annoying was her abusive, obnoxious behaviour towards the staff and hopefully they will have learnt from the experience and now be more confident to deal with such a situation should it arise again.
No guests have the right to be abusive to hotel staff and we do have the right to ask them to leave- I would certainly have requested they leave had I been at the hotel on the evening they were with us- now my team know they can do too.
Nina
Should also point out as it wasn't in the original post that she did actually pay, we insisted she did. Her first credit card was declined but she did pay by another means (albeit reluctantly). Don't want to mislead anyone on that point - so thought I would mention it.
Thank you.