More wedding venue hell.
It is rare that my personal life fits so well with my commercial blogging, but here is another little anecdote and another venue that will certainly never get my recommendation or good will.
In our ongoing search for the perfect wedding venue, a friend of a friend recommended a small hotel tucked away in Scotland . At last! The ideal place with none of the misleading information others had sold to us.
We called, received prices and were told that due to the economy they had plenty of availability. Nothing would be too much trouble. With this in mind and my previous venue booking experiences, it was time to discuss flexibility and the very high rack rate!
I wasn’t expecting miracles , or even success, but I was expecting a response … at least one returned call – an email maybe? Finally, after two weeks of left messages and various promises to call back tomorrow, the hotel owner spoke briefly to my fiancé:
“That is a very busy time for us; we don’t give discounts – goodbye!”
Is it me or is that utter madness? Only a fortnight earlier they had all the availability in the world and “flexibility” – now, nothing. I have total respect for venues that refuse to discount as it can devalue a product but their attitude did far more damage than a rate reduction could possible achieve.
Now, in this climate , we must all add value and the cheapest, easiest way we can raise our game and build client relationships is good service and the right attitude.
Rudeness and poor response times are not to be tolerated!