Category: UK

What is a Director of Sleep of a Hotel Chain?

Director of Sleep
Director of Sleep

In my prior post I asked: “What is a Director of Sleep?”

I probed a bit further.

Usually a Director of Sleep is someone in a Hospital, a Mental or a Geriatric Institution who has specialized in sleep deprivation.

Thanks to the Learning Journey Blog and Cater Research I now know a bit more about the Director of Sleep of Travelodge.

As first Director of Sleep at a hefty UK pnd 60,000 Travelodge appointed Wayne Munnelly in January 2006: “To ensure that guests get a good night’s sleep in the hotel group’s 25,000 UK beds.” Apparently he was succeeded by Leigh McCarron.

He does not “sit on” the Board of Travelodge and he is not “married with children”. Puns intended, because although English is not my mother tongue I doubt Travelodge is using proper English on their site.

So where other hotels only have a Pillow Menu, Travelodge has real pro and he shows it:

According to an April 7th, 2008 Press Release Research by OnePoll in March 2008 carried out among 2248 Britons showed that the top 5 artists getting Britons sound asleep are:

1. Coldplay
2. James Blunt
3. Snow Patrol
4. Take That, and
5. Norah Jones

I kind of like it. I may even continue with a separate category: “The Director of Sleep Sez”

How long do we have to wait till Travelodge's Movable Pod Hotel will be launched?

Travelodge TravelPod 1
The “New” TravelPod
The "New" TravelPod Interior
The “New” TravelPod Interior

The Travelpod is Travelodge’s answer to a tent and can become a movable Pod Hotel.

From its July 28th, 2006 Press Release:

Travelodge has produced the ultimate accessory for lovers of outdoor entertainment. Forget waterlogged tents – now you can have for the first time, a mobile bedroom or ‘Travelpod’ to make even the fussiest festival-goer feel at home.

The room comes complete with a luxury double bed, bedside tables, lights, duvet, pillows, fully carpeted floor, dressing table with light, mirror, chair and even its own WC.

The palatial pod is sealed in a 6 metres (Length) by 2.4 metres (Width) x 2.6 metres
(Height) clear polycarbonate glass box but inside has features that you will find in any Travelodge hotel across the country…

Wayne Munnelly, Travelodge’s Director of Sleep said:…”This summer we are running a few private trials which will allow me to work on the levels of light, noise and privacy allowed by the Travelpod. We will be opening up the test to customers next summer, targeting festivals and other major outdoor events.”,

From its August 20th, 2007 Press Release:

Today Travelodge unveiled its second generation Travelpod – the world’s first mobile hotel room. This latest version has been designed with new features in response to findings from the initial Travelpod trials in 2006.

The modified Travelpod is 40% bigger than the initial prototype. It has been styled in the hotel company’s contemporary room design, incorporating a red, white and blue colour scheme… and has – Air conditioning – Heater – Flat screen TV – DVD player with a collection of DVDs – Ambient lighting which includes bedside lights and a illuminated headboard – Tea / coffee making facilities – Washroom with biodegradable toilet and washbasin with running water facilities.

In addition, the furnishings are made from recyclable timber and lighting has been designed to use low wattage bulbs. The room comes complete with a luxury double bed, bedside lights, duvet, pillows, fully carpeted floor, window blinds, dressing table with light, mirror and chair.

The palatial pod is sealed in a 6 metre (length) by 2.4 metre (width) x 2.6 metre (height) clear polycarbonate glass box, but inside, the features replicate the conventional Travelodge hotel room just recently re-designed.

Leigh McCarron, Travelodge’s Director of Sleep said: “The Travelpod is a ground breaker in outdoor accommodation. We ran some tests on the original Travelpod concept last year and those findings have been used to develop this second generation model for customer trials.”

The new Travelpod will be tested over the next couple of months and the general public will have the opportunity to participate in trials by entering a prize draw at www.travelodge.co.uk.

My musings:

  1. It seems a great concept, a trailable hotel room, or is it just a publicity stunt and aren’t they planing to do anything with it?
  2. Do I miss something? The dimensions are exactly the same. Then where does the 40% more come from?
  3. I wonder who will be the present Director of Sleep..and whatever that may be “A Director of Sleep”?

Hoteliers William and Olga


Olga and her Brother Rocco Forte

This post, mainly about Olga, has been on the backburner for quite some time, as I had misplaced an interview with Olga Polizzi on my computer, but found it back recently.

The interview is by Locum’s managing director James Alexander and Locum’s non-executive director Tony Hodges for Locum Destination Review, a publication of Locum Consulting. It appears the interview can stil be easily found at Locum’s website under the title Olga Polizzi, an eye for individuality.

I’ll start with Olga

Olga Polizzi is a hotel investor, a hotel designer and a hotel proprietor: A real Hotelier.

She is the daughter of famous hotelier Lord Forte. She was married to Count Alessandro Polizzi, an Italian marquess who died in a racing-car accident in 1980, leaving her to bring up her two daughters – then six and four -on her own. For 16 years she was responsible for building and design within his eponymous chain that I remember as Trusthouse Forte long before Granada raided it. More recently, Olga has been a co-investor and again responsible for design in the mini-chain being driven by her brother, Sir Rocco Forte. Finally, she is a hotel proprietor of Hotel Tresanton in St Mawes, Cornwall.

The William part

of this post is William Shawcross, according to his Profile born 28 May 1946 in Sussex, raised at Eton and Oxford. Son of Baron Shawcross. Married to Olga Polizzi, his third wife and her second husband. According to his own website William Shawcross

is an internationally renowned writer and broadcaster. As well as being the author of several highly acclaimed books on subjects as wide-ranging as the Shah of Iran and Rupert Murdoch, he appears regularly on television and radio. His articles have appeared in leading newspapers and journals throughout the world.

His profile, basically by Ed Vulliamy and published Sunday July 13, 2003 in The Observer notes:

William the conqueror (which heading inspired me to the title of this post)

As a radical young writer, he took on the US establishment over Vietnam. Now he counts American hawks as friends and has been appointed biographer to the Queen Mother. What will he do with the House of Windsor’s secrets?……

Marriage to Olga Polizzi, Shawcross’s partner in the ownership and management of the Hotel Tresanton, gave Shawcross the surroundings he needed to both ‘gaze at the sea’ and pen his treatment for last year’s BBC series Queen and Country. It was three years in the making and denounced as ‘sycophantic and fawning’ to the Crown, but it became the collateral for his forthcoming book.

The marriage put the couple at the epicentre of Establishment entertaining: Prince Charles and Shawcross’s old friend Camilla Parker Bowles (her father was a friend of Sir Hartley) are regular guests.

And it enabled the author of Sideshow to attain what he says, as a supposed joke, is his aim in life: to be ‘a Basil Fawlty to my wife – one who writes a bit’.

From the Locum interview

I noted some interesting thoughts of Olga:

She likes:

  • Individuality,

    because the hotelier wants to distinguish the hotel from the one next door and make it more popular. And then the guest comes in and sees something different and likes it.

  • Service:

    Service is 70 per cent of it, really. Service is incredibly important, how you are greeted, hot water, is it friendly?, telephone calls ….’ Despite the new sophistication of the seasoned traveller, ‘we are still the same humans we always were … mainly we want comfort, good food, good service … you’re just playing around with the elements a bit.’

  • Comfy Design:

    I like going somewhere really brilliant and new … I’ll notice the door handles … but most people, you ask them what colour the room was and they won’t remember … it’s just a feeling, it’s everything in its right place, everything really comfortable.

  • Sound Economics:

    We are quite careful and budget-conscious. I can’t bear it when I see something like Sandy Lane where they’ve spent £80 million on it. We’re in there to make money and cannot spend that sort of money.

  • Her first own hotel: The Tresanto

    When I first opened it, the accountant down there said “You can”t make money on a hotel in Cornwall”, but I said “I haven’t put all this effort and money in not to make money, we’re going to make money”. Actually, we are doing incredibly well. This is my fourth year …. I broke even from the first year …

She dislikes:

  • “The Designer Hotel”

    The Designer hotel – a designer hotel doesn’t look at comfort … it’s so often done too cheaply, everything breaks, you take a shower and the water pours out into the room, all the little things that drive you completely mad … design is not for its own sake.

  • Establishing her own brand. Not so much in her own words but in the interviewers’ finale:

    She admits that she is in demand. Practically every day I get someone writing to me. What colour paint is this in the room? Where did you get this bedspread or this material? Where do you get your handles, your basins, your baths? It’s extraordinary … someone came the other day and they’ve called their house Tresanton, she trills. Yet down in the family’s gift and fashion boutique in St Mawes – ONDA – for all the well-cut clothes and Tresanton iconography on towels and lavender sachets, and the £50 umbrella and £5 soap, there is no sense that Olga Polizzi is taking her potential brand strengths seriously enough. She should. She is a talented individual with a rare eye and a fine business brain. And she has something that ordinary mortals understandably envy. In all innocence, she defines this something simply and memorably when discussing good food and good design. It’s true of both, design and food. There is a connection. It’s good taste at the end of the day. Precisely so, Mrs Polizzi. Now why not share your taste with a wider audience? Heroes make good brand stories, but so do heroines.

A Telegraph article In Pollizi Custody describes her next project: The acquisition of the Grade I-listed Endsleigh House on Dartmoor and refurbishment into a five star hotel.

In another Telegraph interview aptly titled Perfection is her Forte

  • “I’m completely obsessive-compulsive. I can never talk to anybody if a crooked painting catches my eye. And I tell myself, ‘Olga, do shut up,’ but I can’t help it. When I used to go to other hotels with my daughters [Alexandra, 33, and Charlotte, 31], I would be straightening all the furniture and they would say, ‘Ma, this isn’t your hotel.’ “

Wow! What a designer!

Update:

I found the photo at another worthwhile interview with her last year over at the Artisans of Leisure Travel Blog

Yotel goes to Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol) and Yotel Gatwick’s First Guest reviews


A You Tube Yotel Preview

Us about Yotel:

Willem, founder and co author of our Dutch language Blog Weekendhotel Weblog wrote about Yotel’s plans already in 2004.

I translated the post for Happy Hotelier in English Answer to sleeping in a wine barrel: Yotel

To Schiphol
According to Zibb it is official: Yotel will open a 56 cubicle hotel in the transfer area of Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol). It will be the second hotel in Schiphol’s transfer zone. It is also mentioned on their website. So it is even more official.

Yotel Gatwick

The first Yotel opened July 1, 2007 in a Gatwick Airport (UK) terminal . The same day as Qbic. Isn’t that a strange coincidence that mrs Smit- Kroes, the EU competition watchdog has to look into? 🙂

Blog Reviews

The first reviews are in. I know it from fellow Blogger, Esme Vos, who wrote about a review on her Blog Rose Cantine and linked to Cyrus Farivar

Basically once you get out of the baggage claim and clear customs, there’s an elevator that goes down one floor — and all of a sudden, it’s like you’re in this serene space that shouldn’t exist in a loud international airport like this one. To the left is a set of computers where you check it — once you’re confirmed (it almost feel like you should get a retinal scan), it prints out your receipt with your WiFi code on it, and gives you the keycard to your room.

Gatwick’s Yotel currently has 46 rooms, and from what I can tell about one-third of them are the “premium” class rooms, which are slightly bigger, with and extra three inches of television screen (23″ vs. 20″) and are the ones shown in the photos on the website. The premium will run you 82 GBP ($168) vs. the “standard” room, which is what I have, which “only” costs 55 GBP ($110) for 24 hours. The minimum charge for the room is 25 GBP ($50) for four hours.

Equipped with the keycard, you then glide through a transparent plastic arch and into the hallways of rooms. Honestly, the calm of the whole place is a little eerie, but I guess that’s the point. The rooms are supposed to be soundproof (well, mostly), and the ambient noise is a low airy hum that permeates the space.

The room is tiny, but it makes you wonder why you’d ever actually need more space than seven square meters. Basically once you’re through the door, you see that the room is divided into three adjacent rectangles. The middle one, the walkway, is about 4 paces (at most) long, and maybe 1.5 paces wide. There’s a fold out desk and small stool.

To the left is the bed, which the website advertises sleeps a “cozy two” — in other words, think your college dorm bed, but maybe slightly wider. The bed is raised up a good 3-4 feet, so that when you lay down you can watch that 20″ TV. Via the TV there’s Internet access (there’s a remote and a wireless mini keyboard), and you can watch English, Spanish, French, German and Arabic-language channels. Movies can be purchased for 5 GBP ($10), or porn for 8 GBP ($16).

To the right is the shower, sink, and toilet — with that entire wall covered by a mirror, which means every time you turn in bed to look towards the bathroom, you get to stare back at yourself.

The fun part, though, about the TV, is that it acts essentially as your telephone to communicate with the “concierge.” You can order food from “The Galley” (most expensive thing on the menu is 7 GBP), drinks (oddly, the only beer on the menu is Cobra), and they’ll deliver it to your door , 24 hours a day.

Still, there don’t seem to be very many other guests — I talked with one guy from Manchester and a woman from Leeds who both seemed to be very up on the whole experience. Both are on their way to holidays in the Greek Islands and Budapest, respectively.

I’m not sure I’d want to spend more than one night in a place like this (particularly if you were sharing the room with someone else, as there’s not a lot of space). But hey, it’s a really comfortable way to spend an overnight layover.

Thanks Cyrus!

Yotel Photos

Cyrus links to a review taken from a press release by Yotel on Treehugger, so I took the liberty to snatch some of their Fotos as the press page of Yotel itself doesn’t give much away:

Yotel Plan

Yotel Room lay out

Yotel Room

Yotel Room

Yotel premium Room

Yotel Premium Room

Yotel Bathroom

Yotel Bathroom

Guest Reviews on Tripadvisor

  • Very convenient!
    Traveler rating: 5
    Jul 19, 2007 pete1769, BIRMINGHAM , ENGLAND

    Stayed there it was the best hotel i have stayed at overnight for a airport hotel .

    The cost was great £25 for 4 hour or £55 for over night standard room.

    There is no tea & coffee in rooms but the cabin bar is cheap for the airport prices .

    The room has everything u need and small room

    This TripAdvisor Member Liked: The price and the rooms cleanness

  • Lifesaver!
    Traveler rating: 5
    Jul 26, 2007 loriannsparks, Hawaii
    I got stranded in the London Gatwick Airport on 07/18, as I was supposed to be heading onto Madrid but missed my flight there. I tried to get a hotel in London, and it was at least 150 pounds or more to get a hotel last-minute. I was already missing my flights and missing out on money from the flights missed on Easy Jet, so I wanted to spend as little money as possible. I found out about the Yotel from the “Tourist” station at Gatwick Airport. I went down there, and I met this really nice employee working there, Martin (not sure of his name exactly, but he was from Poland originally). He said there weren’t any rooms for that night, and without hesitation, I immediately burst into tears. I couldn’t help it – I was stranded, tired and had few options now! He was so nice and sympathetic to my situation. He said to come back down in 2 hours and he would see what he could do. I thanked him repeatedly, went upstairs to eat, call my husband, etc. and headed back down 2 hours later. I’m not sure what he did to get a room for me, but he had a room ready for me when I came back. He was GREAT! Praises go out to him! I ended up having the room for 7 hours – from 12am to 7pm, and it was 43 pounds. That is so inexpensive compared to my other options at that point! The room was modern and clean and just what I needed. I thought it would just have a bed to sleep in, but there was a toilet, sink and shower. It was perfect! The bed was so comfy too. What a life saver, honestly! I would suggest the Yotel to anyone who wants to get a few extra hours of sleep while waiting for a flight at the Gatwick Airport, or if you get stranded like I did. It was a great experience! Thanks Yotel!

    This TripAdvisor Member
    Liked: I didn’t check any of the things above because it’s in the hotel and caters to people who get stranded, want to get a few hours of sleep, etc. but it was very clean and had great service!

    Disliked: Nothing – it was great!

  • Very convenient!
    Traveler rating: 5
    Jul 30, 2007 M&E_London, London
    Fantastic for late arrival and early flight in the morning – literally 30 secs from the departure check-in. Rooms are obviously very small but the premium cabin has everything you need for a cosey night (tv, shower etc) and all very, very clean. Couple of things would improve things – two chairs instead of one; and a hook to hang a wash bag. Apart from that no complaints and a fantastic concept. Would always try one of these before any other airport hotel.
  • Very convenient for overnight stay for early flight…
    Traveler rating: 4
    Jul 26, 2007 Artemis-Angel, Chelmsford

    I stayed here before an early flight from Gatwick,

    I was attracted by the price and the convenience for the airport.

    If you are on your own and looking for somewhere to sleep, the standard cabin is ideal.

    As you would expect the room is small, but there is room for luggage storage and the bathroom is adequate, toilet, basin, shower.

    The bed was very comfortable and I had a good nights sleep.

    There is some noise as residents come and go at different times of the day but I did not find this a problem.

    It should be noted that the ceiling above the bed is not full height, but there is room to sit up and move around on the bed.

    This is an ideal place to sleep before an early flight and I have already booked for my next early flight.
    This TripAdvisor Member
    Liked: The location for airport terminal
    Disliked: n/a

Verdict:

It scores a bit lower than Qbic, but not bad, not bad at all.

Up to the Easy Hotel reviews

Monet's Waterloo Bridge Temps Couvert fetches record

Monet's Waterloo Bridge Temps Couvert fetches record

Monet painted his Waterloo Bridge paintings during a stay in the London Savoy Hotel. This painting fetched a record at Christie’s of UK pnd 18 mio which is more than double the pre sale estimate.

From the Lot notes of Christie’s :

‘I adore London, it is a mass, an ensemble, and it is so simple. What I like most of all in London is the fog. How could English painters of the nineteenth century have painted its houses brick by brick? Those fellows painted bricks that they didn’t see, that they couldn’t see… I so love London! But I only like it in the winter… It is the fog that gives it its marvellous breadth. Its regular, massive blocks become grandiose in this mysterious cloak’ (Monet, quoted in J. House, ‘Visions of the Thames’, pp. 15-37, Monet’s London: Artists’ Reflections on the Thames 1859-1914, exh.cat., St. Petersburg, FL, 2005, p. 33).

When Monet arrived in London in 1899 for a family visit, he had not been to the British capital for some time. Checking into the relatively recently built Savoy Hotel, on the North bank of the Thames, he was amazed by the view, fascinated by the ever-shifting light effects on the river, and immediately embarked upon one of his most celebrated series of paintings, all showing essentially one of three motifs in London. These were the Houses of Parliament and, painted from his bedroom, Charing Cross Bridge and Waterloo Bridge. He focused more on the latter, as in Waterloo Bridge, temps couvert, perhaps enjoying the looping rhythm of the arches in comparison to the rigidity of the ever-right-angled Charing Cross Bridge. Another aspect that may have led to his preference of Waterloo Bridge as a theme was the fact that the sun, rising in the East, shone during the morning from behind it, providing an intriguing array of subtle light effects, a smog-bound chiaroscuro. It is a tribute to the visual power of Monet’s paintings of Waterloo Bridge that the majority are now in museum collections throughout the world, meaning that the appearance of Waterloo Bridge, temps couvert is a rarity, a factor that is emphasized by the sheer quality and beauty of this painting.

It was in order to see his son Michel, who was ostensibly in London to improve his English, that Monet arrived in 1899 with his wife Alice and his stepdaughter, Germaine Hosched̩. His immediate rapture on seeing the view from his room must have been to the chagrin of his family, for already during this stay he embarked upon the beginning of a campaign that would last half a decade. Canvas after canvas was used in order to capture the ever-changing view from his window, and the speed with which these view changed meant that he ended the first stay frustrated, and would returnРalone, and therefore presumably without the distractions of his familyРto the same hotel in 1900 and 1901.