Another hotel for sale

Sorry to hear that yet another hotel in Eastbourne is up for sale. This time it is the Big Sleep which is part of a chain of hotels, predominantly owned by Cosmo Fry. The  50 bedroom hotel  has a price tag of £1.6 million and was described  by the Travel Trade Gazette as the 'Travel Lodge with sex appeal'.

A single hotel up for sale may not be too much of a worry but when it becomes part of a trend then someting needs to be done. The Heatherleigh,  Carlton Court, Palm Court, Claremont and the Alexandra....plus a load more guest houses are all up for sale at this time.

Of course the good news is that Premier Inn have bought  the old Co-Op building although buying the building and opening a hotel is not quite the same....and no sign of any work to date I have to say.
So my advice is book early to get a room then check that the hotel is still operating as you get closer to your stay. Alternatively book yourself into the da Vinci...is the best advice I can give!!!

Languages spoken here

Just been counting the number of different languages spoken by staff at the da Vinci including:

Albanian, Arabic, English, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Tagalog and Urdu.

An impressive line up of talent I think!!!

Falling apart

Sometimes I wonder exactly what is happening to Eastbourne. First we hear the news that pieces are falling off the Congress Theatre, then it is the roof of the bandstand on the seafront. Who exactly is looking after our heritage in Eastbourne?

Unfortunately, not the council it would seem. We have a Conservation Officer but they only work part time - well one day each week in fact...and they don't have time to answer my emails

So we are now paying the price of these cut backs....scaffolding covering the Congress Theatre and a temporary structure to stop the roof of the bandstand falling on one of the tribute groups.

I have also asked what they intend to do about the building opposite which continues to rot away with no one taking a bit of notice...except me perhaps.

Bandstand

Getting ready for the high season

Very busy trying to get everything ready. Walls are being repainted. Others are being touched up. New wooden floors in the remaining rooms. Additional toilets on the mezzanine floors. New sofa beds in the family rooms and new furniture ordered for rooms 106, 206 and 208. We have completed painting the back of the hotel and sorted out the gardens at the rear. Resolved the leak in 105 and replastered the ceiling in the front lounge. Now I just need some guests so I can pay all my credit cards off.

Veolia Environmental Services

Veolia have been refusing to collect our rubbish for the past week claiming we hadn't paid them. In fact we had paid them but they made a mistake in the accounts department. Spent most of this morning sorting it with the bank and their accounts department. Received a cursory sorry but then, to add insult to injury, the woman suggested we should have picked it up earlier....

Opinions from real travellers???

TripAdvisor has been told it cannot claim all of its reviews are written by real travellers. The Advertising Standards Authority said claims that all reviews on the travel site are genuine are "misleading". The ruling came after complaints highlighted statements on the TripAdvisor website which claimed: "reviews you can trust" and "more than 50 million honest travel reviews and opinions from real travellers around the world".

The complainants said that TripAdvisor did not verify the reviews and therefore could not prove that they were genuine or from real travellers. They said that consumers would take the claims on the website to mean they could be certain the reviews posted were from genuine travellers.

TripAdvisor said they used "advanced and highly effective" fraud detection systems but were told not to claim or imply that all the reviews that appeared on the website were from real travellers, or were honest, real or trusted....or from people who even stayed in your hotel as happened to us!!!