What was the first hotel you ever stayed at?

Mine was a hotel in Magaluf on Majorca, on a family holiday in the Seventies. I remember eating ham, hard boiled eggs and chips every lunch and dinner from the buffet; and playing pool with the other English kids in the bar in the afternoon, before we were kicked out to make way for the evening drinkers.  

 

The first hotel I stayed at was a half-timbered place in the New Forest. On the way there our car had to go very slowly behind a cow with diarrhoea. We three brothers shared a triple room and had digestive biscuits with our early morning tea for the first time ever. There was a knackered harpsichord in the lounge that the waiter could play realy well and a pond in the garden where I kissed a girl called Veronica. We were both about six years old. Someone had removed a letter from the lavatory door so it read "TO LET" and a yellow Rolls Royce circa 1930 collected a bride on the day we left. My abiding memories of that hotel are the smell of tomato juice, the sound of the knackered harpsichord and Veronica.

I have a vague recollection of staying in the Woolacombe Bay Hotel as a child in the late seventies. We were 'full-board' and had the same table and waiter for every meal. Looking back it was my first experience of how an individual staff member can have a pivotal influence on a guest's experience. The decor and facilities were irrelevant to me but the way our waiter engaged with my whole family every time we dined was a highlight of our stay and the reason I nagged my parents to return the following year. At 7 years old, I didn't have the same grasp of staff turnover challenges I do now and I was devastated to find our waiter had moved on. Since leaving university 20 years ago, my passion and challenge has been to excite & motivate staff to give excellent individual service by exceeding expectations.

So: truly a life-and career-defining hotel stay! Thanks for your story.

Ah, the smell of tomato juice. Reminds me of my junior school, which always used to smell of the tinned tomatoes they served for lunch.