Theft

A nation of thieves

According to a recent survey conducted by the Daily Telegraph, light fittings, television sets and the stuffed head of a wild boar were among items stolen by hotel guests this year. Amazingly, nearly 40% of guests admitted to having misappropriated something while staying at a hotel. When the Good Hotel Guide conducted a similar exercise among its selected hotels, they told us that hairdryers, bath robes and expensive toiletries were the stuff most likely to go missing. Even copies of the Guide, which many of them put in their bedrooms, continue to disappear.

How can hotels minimise their losses? Accusing your guests of kleptomania is not a route to popularity. But one of our hoteliers tried this semi-humorous approach with a notice in every bedroom: 'We hope you appreciate all the small touches which we have added around the hotel. Unfortunately not everybody leaves things for future guests to enjoy. The favourite items which go missing are scallop-shaped soap dishes, hand-made toilet roll holders, Laura Ashley sewing kits, napkin rings, hair dryers, torches, telephones and hot-water bottles.' There was a special postscript about the mini-bar: 'We have learnt that you need a razor blade to cut the seal around a mini vodka bottle. You can then drink its contents and fill it up with water. For whisky and rum, it is a little more difficult, but if you order early morning tea, you can fill the bottles with tea. It has happened in this hotel.'

Brian Sack, the late founder of Sharrow Bay, had a more direct tactic. One day he was saying goodbye when the middle-aged guest opened her handbag, inadvertently revealing three of the hotel's ashtrays. 'I think one is acceptable but three is a bit greedy', said Sack, taking back two of them. The lady, not at all shamefaced, protested that she always helped herself to souvenir ashtrays. 'Yes madam' , Sack replied, 'but I doubt whether they are all Royal Worcester.'

Special offers

Christmas

There are lots of seasonal special offers being offered by our selected hotels. Complimentary chilled bottles of champagne, even a free hot chocolate before you go to bed. I like this purple prose from the Hotel Penzance in Cornwall: 'Why sweat over the turkey and the washing up? Let us take the strain whilst you enjoy peace, goodwill and wassail. From classic candle-lit dinners to traditional family Christmas lunch, and seeing 2010 in with a magical bang--call for availability quickly as we're always fully booked. From £375 per person for three days.'

Hotels, inns and B&Bs with special offers (click and see)

New website

Dark arts

Our newly designed website is proving a big hit, with up to 20,000 visitors a month. We are not, however, content with this figure and are planning to invest even more in the dark arts of SEO, the acronym for search engine technology. How does one persuade Google and and other search engines that the GHG website is the best in the business? Anyone who has thoughts on this or how the website can be improved, please email me at: editor@goodhotelguide.com. One new feature of the website is a list of hotels for each region at the bottom of the home page. For example, if you select Scotland, you will see a list of Scottish hotels by county and by city. There is also a list of special Scottish hotels and two featured Scottish hotels with photos at the bottom of the page. These spots, like the Special offers on the right hand column of the home page, are paid-for by the hotels.

Travellers Tales

Basil Fawlty

1. 'The young, perhaps too young, wine waiter and his chummy ‘Can I top you up now?’ was jarring, sometimes overfamiliar, sometimes nervously incompetent. I felt that these young things should be airlifted to France or Switzerland and shown how to do it, because they had not got a clue.'

2. 'Arriving at our harbourside hotel, we admired the elegant facade, in excellent condition and apparently unchanged since those childhood summers of 40 years ago. Inevitably, the interior has been comprehensively gutted and refurbished in the modern manner; it was soulless. In both bars, giant screens were showing the European football championships -- on a gorgeous June evening.'

3. 'Foolishly, to save a few bob we decided against a ‘seaview’ bedroom. We had not expected to be given an interior oven: one tiny skylight, barely ro om to swing the proverbial cat. After a hot, uncomfortable and disturbed night, with staff and customers slamming doors all around, we moved to a charming room, but its comforts were outweighed by slapdash service and low standards at breakfast. The view of the harbour from the dining room balcony did not distract from fruit straight from the fridge, packaged cereals and sliced-bread white toast.'

BUY tHE gUIDE

Christmas is coming

The 2010 edition of the Good Hotel Guide to Great Britain and Ireland makes a perfect Christmas present. Completely revised and rewritten, the new edition has 450 full entries, and more than 400 shortlist entries. There are more than 100 new entries and a similar number has been dropped. Discount vouchers worth a total of £150 are included with each copy. They enable a 25% saving off the normal B&B price at participating hotels. A copy of the new Guide ordered direct from us costs £17.50 (including £2.50 p&p), compared to a retail price of £20.

Click here to buy now!

The Good Hotel Guide, founded 32 years ago, is totally independent. It receives no payments, no hospitality and no advertising from hotels selected for an entry in the printed edition. Hotels pay to be on the GHG website, but only those hotels which have an entry in the printed Guide are invited to appear on the website. Some of our selected hotels also buy copies of the printed Guide from us. Selected hotels are recommended by readers, backed where necessary by an anonymous inspection. The British edition of the Guide is published each autumn. Adam and Caroline Raphael, who edit the Guide, are award-winning journalists. Caroline, a former BBC researcher and a travel writer, is editor-in-chief. She has worked on the Guide for more than 30 years. Adam, who previously worked for the Guardian, the Observer, the BBC and the Economist, is the Guide's marketing director. Desmond Balmer, formerly travel editor of the Observer, is editor of the British guide. The Guide specialises in small owner-managed hotels, inns and B&Bs in England, Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands and Ireland. It includes budget B&Bs, good value hotels as well as grand country houses and chic city hotels, all offering value for money in their price.range..