The awkward wanderer

 

I’m the awkward wanderer!

The world is not what it used to be. Politicians, and the elite, like us to think it is better, that the second half of the twentieth century was a shambolic mess of racism, bullying and exploitation. We’re told, through the media - both social and mainstream - that we’ve never had it so good, and that a wonderful future awaits us if we go along with all of the ideas that the elite suggest. Shamefully, our children are taught this at school, and our universities have become environments where challenging discussion is prohibited, on the grounds that someone might be offended. There is even a government unit - SPI-B - to help ‘nudge’ us into believing what the government wants us to believe.

Our elite, perhaps personalised worst by that vile couple the Windsors, who prefer to style themselves in their far off lair as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have little idea what life is like for ‘normal’ people. We know how to manage our health. We know what we want from our public services. Yet we are being subjected to more and more restrictions, soon, perhaps to include travel restrictions to ‘prevent global warming’, while they swan around in their private jets and staying in hotels or apartments that cost more per night than you or I might earn in a year. 

I’m intent on questioning the fundamental assumption that things are better today than they used to be. Like many, I experience incompetence of businesses and government, both local and national, on a daily basis; I see how the great ideas of ‘the elite’, like the dominance of the internet, have resulted in poorer service to customers, while no doubt increasing profit to the ‘entrepreneurs’ who provide those internet services.

I spent thirty-six years working in business, latterly as a project manager. I can’t use much from that experience to demonstrate the failings of the ‘elite’, but I did spend much time travelling on business, much by rail, and I also learned much about the obligations of businesses and managers to the safety and wellbeing of their employees, customers and the general public - i.e. non-elite persons. I owned a B and B for ten years; my ex-wife worked in the care sector and I’ve been in more hospitals and care homes than I have toes, fingers and other projections on which to count them. I’ve walked England from east to west and south to north (Mablethorpe, Morecambe, Langstone, Bowness on Solway to be precise); I currently live in Bedfordshire, that is, the outer part of the south-east that is so misunderstood and despised by the metropolitan elite. I’ve also lived and worked in Yorkshire for ten years - an interesting experience for a southerner, anyone who thinks that discrimination on grounds of where you come from is about skin colour should try it. I’m sixty-two years old. I’ve worked in the UK, Ireland and Germany; I’m reasonably capable in the German language, and perhaps French as well. I have experience; a quality our leaders prefer to ignore, chasing vainly after the approval of fresh-faced youth, contrary to both common sense and the behaviours of our forefathers down the generations. So in this blog I’ll use my experience to ask awkward questions about life in modern society - travelling, staying in accommodation businesses, walking around towns or countryside - which I feel that we, as paying customers (or taxpayers) are entitled to ask, and our masters should be prepared to answer. 

I am also a carer, and write the ‘Thoughts of a carer’ blog. My partner, Viv, had a bad experience with her health a few years ago (now the subject of a negligence claim, so I don’t say much about it); I spent eighteen months looking after her when she was in a very disabled condition. She has improved but retains some cognitive and physical disabilities, and I have recorded many of my caring experiences on that blog; in this one I shall cover non-care related matters.

Prior to Vivs illness, I used to do a lot of online reviews - particularly on Tripadvisor. By 2016 I lost interest in doing any more; TA were moving into selling accommodation rather than just reporting on it, and businesses sprung up in the virtual world where businesses can buy their own five-star reviews; googling ‘buy online reviews’ returns 10 screens of listings, surely devaluing any online review. I still do the one, when I feel I have something important to say; I did one on Yell recently for a local business that I had observed on a couple of occasions giving me significant concerns about their attitude to public safety. After a few days I received an email telling me that Yell had removed it because my comment that ‘one of the workers could well have been drunk judging by his attitude’ was defamatory; it's clearly not in Yell’s interest to keep a two-star review visible for a business that is paying for its listing, especially when the only other reviews give the business five stars. Yell did say that I was welcome to do another review for the company, although I would have to wait thirty days. I replaced my previous detailed review with just the words:

I'm a project manager of 20 years experience.

I wouldn't use this company.

That review is still visible but does little by way of articulating my concerns regarding the competence of the business or its employees; it's not much use as a review.

I will name business or local authorities; I see my blog entries as being rather like online reviews, but, instead of being policed (or censored) by the faceless internet authorities to help them sell more business listings, they will represent what an online review should represent - an honest, businesslike but frank description of my experience as a customer, and why it is not what it might have been in the past.

An example - guest accommodation businesses

Let me give an example of how things are not what they used to be. Twenty or thirty years ago, anyone wanting to run an accommodation business - a B&B, or hotel - in the UK had to be accredited by the tourist board, AA or RAC. It wasn’t actually the law, but the only way to get business was to place an entry in a hardcopy listing publication, perhaps costing fifty pounds even for a small business; potential customers would see your entry and then contact you by phone to make a booking. Publishers of such listings would not accept entries from non-accredited businesses, largely to cover themselves in case there was any risk that you did not enjoy your stay, for the law on publishing in the UK means that the publisher of listing magazine or book might be jointly liable should you have a legal claim relating to your stay. 

That, of course, went out of the window with the internet, where sites such as hotels.com, booking.com, AirBnB and indeed TripAdvisor are deemed to be ‘platforms’ and not ‘publications’, so aren’t liable for any losses incurred by customers of businesses listed on their ‘platform’. Our great leaders, in their eagerness to be seen to be in tune with new technology, left open a loophole that has resulted, I believe, in a significant deterioration in the quality of accommodation available to travellers in the UK.  

There is a publication  produced by Visit England - the Pink Book - that specifies the legal obligations that any accommodation business must follow. I believe that many such businesses now operating through the internet do not comply in full; VE also provides an assessment service which provides assurance to customers that these legal requirements are met. At a basic level this does not provide a star rating, but does confirm that your business meets basic levels of safety, security and competence; the star rating scheme provides more information to potential customers. 

From what I can tell from online searches, there are few businesses using even the basic ‘entry level’ of accreditation. A check on the VE site just now for accredited serviced accommodation businesses in Harwich, Essex gave no results. I know personally of four currently open hotels in that town, but none seem to have been assessed by Visit England, according to their website.

Looking at it from the businesses’ perspective, this may not be surprising: assessment costs money, and they get custom from internet sites, for which they need no external assessment - the start ratings on, for example, Google, are determined by customer (or bought) reviews, not a Visit England assessor. 

The result is a huge level of variability in the quality of accommodation available: businesses provide what they feel they need in order to make a profit; in some cases basic hygiene or common sense goes out of the window. (I recently saw an episode of Four In A Bed on TV where the business owner had not fitted locks to the doors of the guests rooms ‘because they didn’t want to run the sort of business where people have to lock their doors’; this places the owner at great risk should a guest have an item of value stolen while staying with them, and, worse, might put guests in the position of being assaulted in their bed at night. I’ve also recently found a bed bug in a hotel room, clear evidence that good cleaning standards were not being followed. Neither of these would be likely to happen in a VE accredited establishment.)

To me it is quite clear that the internet revolution has not resulted in a better, or even as good, customer experience in guest accommodation in the UK. The large chains - Premier Inn, Wetherspoon, etc - have good processes, train their staff properly and maintain their standards because they will go under if they don’t; smaller chains and one off establishments may not even know whether they are making money or not, they often cut corners, potential customers can’t tell the good from the bad. Nowadays I will stay at a large chain hotel whenever I can, it seems to be the only way to get reliable quality. The world of guest accommodation is not better now than it was thirty years ago.

Businesses will see me as an awkward customer for asking the kind of questions I do. I think that’s something to be proud of.