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I was surprised to receive marketing emails yesterday for some Scottish Marstons pubs titled "Want the best place to watch England?" .. and amused by today's reverse ferret from the same venues "We’ve given our email sender the red card."
It pays to know your customer.
@ Agurney.
RE: Knowing your customer. Yes, there are a few companies that could well be learning that lesson the hard way over the coming weeks/months. Koppaberg, for one (among others) who are taking quite the backlash for swerving GB News.
Quite a lot of comments on social media saying that customers will be boycotting them because of it.
Always a bad move peace ing off half your customer base.
Trent
Some good news, after reading the weekend press tips on Spoons & Premier Inns I thought I would check the availability of rooms in Marstons pubs with rooms, on their websites. I picked 10 at random which were reasonably close to, or in, a tourist type of area & always for dates pre the school holidays & it is fair to say that the rooms available appear to be about as rare as rocking horse manure. I pub I had booked to stay in a few years ago had 1 room only available at £120 pn. Having been allocated this same room those years ago it is fair to say it was not at all nice, so if it fetches that price for the next few months it has to be a good sign indeed. I was alerted to the firmness in room prices by a contact who often uses air bnb & he told me their prices had doubled or tripled in some places he often uses so our heavily booked estate backs up his air bnb story. Hopefully MARS can find enough experienced staff to work in these places & we might receive a pleasant surprise.
Especially pleasant after our esteemed board kicked Platinum's offer into touch without a by your leave.
Hi Barchid.
That does sound promising. It's good for us that the demand is there. Very encouraging.
£120 a night does sound about right. When were supposed to have gone to the Premier Inn the other week, they wanted just over £250, but that was for 4 of us for 2 nights including unlimited breakfasts for us all for the Sunday & Monday. We had to have 2 rooms though as our oldest lad is 17.
We 're booked it for July when they're off school but they want another £70 on top with it being peak time. Not really unexpected but still.
Hope you're doing ok mate.
barchid, Trent,
Returned last night from another trip and used both Marstons (Friday) and Premier Inn(Saturday)
On a scale of 1-10 would give Premier 8 and Marstons 6.
Briefly occupancy at both who are on Tourist Routes, was 50% Marstons and 90% Premier. I based this assessment on car park use.
Did complete a comparable report last night but disappeared before posting. Do'nt have time to repeat now.
@ Fairdealer.
I've not had the opportunity to stay at a Marston's Inn as yet, so I can't really do a like for like comparison.
I have no reason to doubt your word, if you say that your experience was not as good as could be, then I'll take that as so.
I've only stayed at 2 Premier Inns, the one in Stourbridge (which at roughly 4 years old now is still fair to consider as a new (ish) build). The other one I went to in Newcastle did create the impression of being somewhat older, but the standard between the two were pretty much on a LFL basis.
Some of the Marston's Inns from pictures on their website do also look good too, but a picture does not always tell the full story, and doubtlessly, we will have some that need to be freshened up , which as I've said preciously, that the money spent on the Brains deal could easily have been better employed in achieving that goal.
ATB mate.
Fairdealer
Very interesting, certainly I have not been impressed with the Marstons room offer but that could be because I was looking in the wrong places though does indicate their standard is too variable.
On the bookings front though they do seem late June early July to be very busy which augurs well.
Barchid, Trent,
In the lost post I did compare the service and meal provision of Marstons and Premier Inn ( Beefeater)
Remember I was looking at it from a Customer's point of view.
Too within a penny or 2, breakfast costs were similar. Both meals were well cooked and presented. The Beefeater breakfast was more generous than Marstons which was meagre and not substantial. Both were Full English ( Marstons could be called 1/2 English)
Value was best at Beefeater.
Value and cost controls is good for Marstons Shareholders, but unless meal content is addressed, some customers may prefer other providers.
Staffing in both venues is clearly an issue, which makes one wonder how the hospitality sector is going to serve the expected demand this summer.. Considering my visits were over the weekend when occupancy was higher staff numbers were in the case of Marstons, where staff were predomanently younger, were run off their feet. At Beefeater staff were rather more mature and better organised.
How all venues are going to cope once the peak of holiday season arrives must be a concern to all Hospitality venues. It does seem many of the cheaper employees ( Eastern European) have disappeared which is leaving a large void for managers. This is where Management Organisational skills will come to the fore.
From what I have seen Marstons need to be more active in identifying weaknesses within individual venues, something which should have been addressed during lockdown. It may have been, but is not apparent now re-opening has occured.
Fairdealer
Many thanks for that, food for thought (or not if only half english!).
That seems like a well balanced assessment, Fairdealer.
Work seems to need to be done on our estate to improve our offering, based on your observations it would seem. To my mind, I think RF should have concentrated on that rather than chasing Brains to pull them out of whatever situation they were in. I've said this before, that's what they should have done and left Brains to their fate, and then possibly looked to have scooped them up at a heavy discount if the free funds were there to do so.
Just my opinion, of course.