man o' the year

I knew immediately when working in education that the PFI schemes would be bad for finanaces. I thought it would only be through increased costs due to interest over the years. Turns out of course that it basically did the same to public builds as easing up lending has done for the housing market - more crap builds at massively inflated prices.

For years as a 10cc fan I wondered what "Parmays" were. Obviously they were good when accompanied by cheese.

nothing for me last month and £50 for my wife. £50 for me this month and £75 for the wife. Total winnings now £900 in 7 months from two 50k holdings.

Ours is 15%. We could pay more to improve our ranking and shower higher on the B.com website lists. I cannot understand why accommodations sometimes refuse to offer lower rates to direct bookings. Our direct prices are always 10% lower than through agents. However still the majority of our bookings come through agents (mostly B.com now).

Contractually we are supposed to offer the same prices to B.com. in practice this means that you have to offer the same prices as on other agent websites. In fact we put our rates with B.comup a little higher than others after an expensive dispute with them. They have not yet come back and asked for matched rates nor have we had any customer point this out.

Typically 15%

2nd lot of towels this month and we had two remote controls for tv taken in a week after none going missing for 6 years. Sign of the times? We have strated videoing room as evidence of towels/remote being there beforehand and condition of room.

Interesting one tonight is that the family who pinched ten towels and so I subsequently took money for this from their card and sent a message to explain why have just put a full marks review for us up online. Weird.

Or maybe we are.

We would do the opposite. Due to the ease of feedback and scoring on B.com we will generally favour B.com customers over direct booking. They are paying more due to commission and it is now rare for our direct customers to go onto Tripadvisor (or google) and review. This would not apply to pur regular direct customers who have their favourite rooms which we will always try to put them in as they stay so often. Yes tis is correct. You only have to google "hotel in xyz" and you will find it rare now for hotels to show on first 3 pages as booking agent sites dominate.

Premier Inn have now been copied by many. Their refusal to list on booking sites has been a strength previously but now that the price and quality is matched by others it may be their undoing. As properties age I suspect the offering by Premier Inn will become less attractive in many places as they resist the cost of extensive refurbishment. The previously more up market Best Western are being squeezed and the model will ultimately die along almost all independent hotels without some special USP.

Laterooms have been left behind by Booking.com and Venere/Expedia/Hotels.com. The former especially moved to include Airbnb type property. B.com also moved down market in terms of service offered both to customers and providers and there will be a price to pay for this eventually I suspect but at the moment it has worked for them and they are the most powerful booking agency. 90% of our agency bookings are through them. We have had only 1 or 2 bookings from laterooms this year.

Link

My version :

I was looking at flights from Bristol today.