Time and time again I see where service in restaurants, hotels etc. is what really makes the difference. Take last weekend, the extended family, and one friend, travelled to Athlone in Ireland to watch a pre-season rugby friendly between Exeter Chiefs and Connacht. The match itself was a bit of a walk over for Exeter, read the match report from the coach here, but the weekend was made special by the general good will of the Irish, they were so friendly and accommodating.
We’d booked into the Prince of Wales hotel, and if you’d asked me whether I’d go there again shortly after arriving I’d have had to think twice. The rooms weren’t all ready, even at 14:30, and when they were they had managed to lose the paperwork. The actual rooms had old cigarette burns on the furniture, there were no bath towels and a tiny amount of shampoo, we hadn’t taken any as we only had carry on luggage and the airports still enforce the silly minimal liquids rule. However, all this was made up for by the great service. We got back after the match at 21:15 on the Saturday, the restaurant was about to close and we wanted a late supper, in England you’d have got a grumpy waiter rushing you, not so in Ireland where the cheerful chap let everyone take their time and looked after us all evening. Even better was the next morning, we all went to breakfast (which was on offer till 11:00!) except my wife who wasn’t feeling too well. After the full Irish and a trip around town we coaxed her downstairs, by now it was gone 12:00. She really just wanted some toast and again, in England, you’d get a sorry, too late, it’s the lunch menu now, but there we got the simple, no problem, white or brown?
On a related not compare this to how Tesco treated a long-standing customer over a perceived shop lifting incident. The whole attitude of the clearly incompetent, power crazy and presumably lacking in common-sense (that’s the polite version) shop staff. I know it must happen but do people really pay over £200 for their shopping and try to steal something worth about £2? Anyway the lady in question has voted with her feet and I’m tempted to do the same.
Finally a word about Ryanair, a company I never thought I’d do business with but used for the trip to Ireland, we flew from Bristol to Dublin. Other than the continual, and barely understandable, exhortations to buy stuff, from snacks to gifts to smoke free ‘cigarettes’, from the lovely Maria, who certainly wasn’t Irish, the trip was fine. The staff were ever so pleasant and cheerful, unlike the last time I went long haul on British Airways and got a miserable and aggressive steward from Scotland. There was a delay coming back, not their fault, and in my opinion you get what you pay for, a no-frills flight. Just follow their seemingly unending list of rules on extras and you won’t pay more, again I’d use them next time.
