There's a world of difference betwen style and substance - you should know: ask any politician. And in an age when so often the reality not only fails to live up to the hype but even struggles to draw breath, it's a pleasure to see the occasional establishment work hard to transform the copy into comfort.
These thoughts were occasioned by a visit to a Northern Ireland hotel which has gone out on a limb to make the necessary investment in both the folk and the facilties. Let me explain: the recent building boom in Irish hotels has been a function of the Celtic Tiger and the massive house construction which has been necessary to accommodate a growing workforce.
Many of the new hotels were put up by builders seeking to reduce their tax liability or to diversify. Fine as these places may be, a management company can rarely bring the same dedication to service that an owner-managed outfit can. All of which brings me to the Hill family, who own Belfast's Ten Square and the Galgorm Manor near Ballymena in County Antrim.
Now Ballymena could not - and would not - claim to be a tourism hotspot. Lying half way between Belfast and the north coast, its residents enjoy an unfortunate reputation for being pretty presbyterian towards their neighbours and their cash. So it is all the more welcoming to see a hotel where the owners have increased their investment from £11 to £17 million ($35 million), a massive investment by anyone's standards.
For their trouble, the Hills have a splendid 75 room manor house hotel beside the river Main with a fabulous new spa, four self-catering cabins beside the river and other cottages nearby. And whilst many a reviewer would pass this off with an affected sneer: "Oh, but just everyone has a spa these days, dahling", perhaps the more sober-minded might like to look a little more closely.
My colleague David Hudson and I spent a fascinating two hours in the company of the bubbly Sharon Stuart, who has returned home after many years of selling upmarket hotels in Scotland. It is a pleasure to see someone who takes such a pride in their property - it is much, much rarer to meet a real professional who understands that concrete must always defer to consideration; that even the most luxrious of outfits is useless without colleagues who attend to the client first - and everything else in second place, no matter how urgent it may appear or how insistent Accounts, Housekeeping or even the GM (who doubles as God) may be.
In all our years of tour operating (10 and counting), we have always striven to build a link to those people who have the same priorities as ourselves. I suppose the "do as you would be done by" ethic is way too simple for the purveyors of massive management tomes but it'll do nicely for us, thank you.
So good luck to all the folk at Galgorm. To paraphrase Kipling: "If you can meet with divas and madonnas/And treat those two imposers just the same....." you will succeed. And there's nothing sweeter than turning bubbles into booty, provided you cherish your real treasure - your reputation.
