Rude rude owner.

Rude rude owner.

I have been accused of being rude, please read through and make your own decision, I have attached the booking form to show the hefty discount I was offering for two persons only. I have redacted any means of identifying the writers of the review.

These Guests phoned in July to book a house in August for two people, and I told them I only had the Eco-Loft available which slept only 2 persons in one bedroom and Apartment 6 which slept up to 4 but that I would offer a low-occupancy discount based on two people, they asked could they view them on the internet and I gave the appropriate details.

They came back a day or so later saying they would prefer a house that opened directly onto a garden as opposed to a balcony in the case of number 6, and that there might be more people staying.

I suggested I had house number 2 available but that it was a large house capable of sleeping 6 people so would cost more but that I would still offer a low occupancy discount and that they could pay for any additional guests on a nightly price of £20 per person. They send me a text saying their budget was limited to £360 and I replied by text that I would offer House 2 at £320 for two people and that they could pay for any additional guests at £20 per night.

They replied ‘Thanks, that’s great’ and said they wished to book.

I drew up the booking form below, which shows the full price of the house at £630 but with a ‘low occupancy discount’ of £310, (they were getting the house for basically half price) and emailed it to them on the 25/7/11, and asking for their address details to initiate payment.

I got the following reply on the 2/8/11,

“Hi there, Could you resent payment email. I am paying today but the email seems to been deleted from my junk folder. Apologies for the delay. Thanks K M”

I replied that I would resend the email the next day as I was out of the office. I also sent a text on the 3/8/11 asking again for their address details as it would not be possible to pay online as the Card used is checked against the address details.

I never got these details, instead I got a call a night or two later on my mobile phone from the husband of the couple, saying they were only going to pay the £320 and did not see why they had to pay the extra to have people come down and stay. I said ‘ G… lets cancel the booking and that I am sure that you can find cheaper accommodation somewhere else.’ At that point the mobile phone signal broke-off, I expected the couple to phone back but they did not.

Coincidentally the fact that they phoned on the mobile is significant, not only from the point of view that signal failed which may appear as I rudely ‘hung up’, but to make the mobile phone work in my office I have to leave it in a window and put it on speaker phone when someone calls and not move the phone. As a consequence of this I have a witness to the conversation with G. M. and they were quite shocked by the manner in which I was addressed.

Reviews on Tripadvisor.

I have had a number of Bad reviews on Tripadvisor, 'I' being the operative word as the critical reviews are more about me than about the properties, if anything the reviews praise the Cottages but have issues about my manner or the rules and regulations I use in the management of the Cottages. Any rule or regulation we have are for the benefit of the guests who have paid their money and chosen to have stayed with us. We see Tory Bush as more than mere accommodation for the night but a holiday experience, we even have people in their twenties now coming back to have their own children experience a place where they had a great child-hood holiday, when I see them bring their grandchildren then I know I will have been in this business too long!

I have no real issue with personal criticism, it hurts at the time of reading, but there is an expression that says, if amongst the people you meet, a third like you, a third dislike you, and the other third are indifferent then you are not doing too bad.

But what is upsetting is that these reviews are putting people off staying at the Cottages, particularly new visitors and visitors from out of the country. We have calculated, using Tourist Board figures that over the 16 years we have been in business we have brought £5.1 million into the local economy and at these difficult times we should all be doing as much as possible to support these primary enterprises that generate new cash for the country. Thankfully we have a high level of repeat business, probably the highest in our sector and that's because most people appreciate the way the cottages operate.

It is noticeable that the bad reviews I have had are where I have challenged people on some issue and it would appear that they are using Tripadvisor as a means of retribution. I actually think that this is an issue for Tripadvisor, and there is a view in the leisure sector that Tripadvisor has been dis-credited as a consequence of malicious, retributive or just plain false reviews. I am not alone in this, none other than Duncan Bannatyne of Dragons Den fame and owner of four Hotels is considering legal action against Tripadvisor.

I am going to post on this blog the contents of the Critical Reviews and let others decide if their is validity in them. By using the 'property right to reply' box following each Tripadvisor review I hope to able to direct people from the reviews on Tripadvisor to this blog, I don't think Tripadvisor would let me give all the background that let up to each review.

Selecting the tree species that favour red squirrels but are unlikely to encourage grey squirrels into the core area is of paramount importance. Favourable species include Scots pine, larch, Norway spruce, lodgepole pine, Douglas fir, yew and hawthorn. Even a commercial plantation consisting primarily of the North American conifer Sitka spruce, can contribute to red squirrel conservation, providing that 20% of the tree cover consists of the above favoured species , where suitable site conditions prevail.

Woodland managers who require broadleaves for landscape or biodiversity reasons should use any of the following species - birch, rowan, ash, willow, aspen or alder. These species produce small seed and although they are not a favoured food source for the red squirrel, they do not encourage grey squirrel incursions.

The Irish Diaspora

I thought I would begin this blog with a photograph, partly to add content but also to test out a little bit of software. I have tried to upload photos before but they have failed and latterly I have learned that the file size may have been too big, just too much detail for blogger to handle, apparently an image on the internet does not need to be as 'intense' as an image for, say a glossy colour brochure. So my bit of software can reduce the number of pixels in the photographs so that they can be uploaded much more quickly but still be viewable.

As a consequence of being in the tourism business we get bombarded with information from one source or another, the Northern Ireland Tourist Board has three publications, The View, Tourism Eye, and the Tourism Spotlight, who these are intended for and how the content differs I don't know. We get another publication from 'TIL' , (Tourism Ireland Limited) which is the organisation charged with marketing Ireland on a whole Island basis, there is also Failte Ireland which is responsible for marketing the South of Ireland and I am sure that they have a raft of in-house publications as well.

What I notice is that the most important person in this chain is often overlooked, namely the visitor, is there any publication or E-zine that they can sign up to and be kept informed about happenings within Ireland north and south. It is a bit like the now infamous debate we had in our local council last month, the Tourist Board were admirably funding the erection of new sign-age for a coastal route around the Mourne Mountains, and it came before the local Council for approval.

Here, however, rather than welcoming this development, the issue became the language that the signs were to be in, the Tourist Board were funding signs in English only, but some of our Councillors in their wisdom thought that they should also be in Irish and just as readily a few more thought that they should then also be in Ulster Scots. I think the fundamental point was missed, if language was to be an issue, it should have been which language would most have met the needs of our visitors, German, French, Dutch perhaps?

Back to the matter of those publications, as mentioned TIL, remember who they are?, have a publication called Contact, and apart from the usual range of photos of people in suits standing beside pull-up banners there is some good information, as indeed there is in all the publications, just do we need so many? One article caught my eye, it is a campaign to connect with people of Irish Ancestry throughout the world using twitter, you can read more about the article by clicking on this link, apparently the best tweet will get a 140 hour short break in Ireland.

http://www.tourismireland.com/Home!/About-Us/Press-Releases/2010/Connecting-with-the-Diaspora-in-GB-through-Twitter.aspx

The magical 140 figure comes from the maximum characters you can use in a tweet, you would think I would know what I am talking about, but I haven't a clue really, however next week I have planned some training on social media. This campaign to connect with the Irish Diaspora, as it is called, ie Irish people spread across the world can be checked out on an associated website

http://myirish140.com/ or on twitter itself http://twitter.com/@myirish140 .

Fairy Thorns

Here at Tory Bush we are considering making the biggest hanging basket in County Down, really it is making use of some steel work we inherited, I will photograph the project as it goes on and post a blog later when all the flowers in bloom, if they do bloom that is, Jim and I are not exactly what may be called green fingered, lets say thank goodness for the recent wet summers we have had.

Jim is the handy man here at Tory Bush and from all those that have stayed the consensus is that he does a fantastic job. Talking about wet summers, about three years ago we decided to put window boxes on all the cottages and houses on site and at the time we made a device to attach to a hose pipe to enable us to water the boxes on the first floor windows, but would you believe it given the nature of the last few summers we have not had to use it once. Some may be thinking for a business trying to sell holidays in Northern Ireland talking about wet summers is not doing a good job, but I don't believe anyone books a holiday in Northern Ireland on the basis of guaranteed sunshine, I believe our mild moist climate gives us other attributes in terms of vegetation, or peat covered mountains and of course the moniker the 'Emerald Isle', I also think it reflects in our personalities, the easy going nature of the people.

Johnny Cash had a song called The Forty Shades of Green , and believe me there is forty shades and many more. The song was a tour through Ireland from well known place to another but making no geographical sense.

I close my eyes and picture the emerald of the sea
from the fishin boats at Dingle to the shores at Donaghadee
I miss the River Shannon and the folks at Skibbereen
the moorlands and meadows and their Forty Shades of Green

But most of all I miss a girl in Tipperary town
and most of all I miss her lips as soft as eiderdown
I long again to see and do the things we´ve done and seen
where the breeze is sweet as shalimar and there´s Forty Shades of Green

I wish that I could spend an hour at Dublin´s churning suft
I long to watch the farmers drain the bogs and spade the turf
to see again the thatching of the straw the women clean
I´d walk from Cork to Larne to see those Forty Shades of Green

But most of all I miss a girl in Tipperary town
and most of all I miss her lips as soft as eiderdown
I long again to see and do the things we´ve done and seen
where the breeze is sweet as shalimar and there´s Forty Shades of Green

However back on track, we were walking through the grounds at Tory Bush trying to find a place to locate the biggest hanging basket in Ireland ! !, yes I am making that claim now, and we came upon the Fairy Thorn that is located at Tory Bush and I thought that I had never blogged about the tree so here goes. From old maps there was a fence, wall or hedge down through the field in front of the cottages, we have replaced that boundary albeit a few metres further out into the next field, but when ever the original boundary was removed there was a thorn tree at the start of the boundary and it was never taken away with the rest of the wall or hedge or what ever was there. There is a big superstition about Fairy trees here in Ireland and people won't cut them or indeed dig them up. When I began this blog I 'googled' Fairy Thorn just to get some background and the following link is the first I came across http://ghosterelle.blogspot.com/2006/03/fairy-thorns-interview-wbarry.html and believe it or not I remember very well the incident mentioned in the second paragraph where an electricity sub-station had to be relocated because of the accidents surrounding the removal of the Fairy Thorn.

The local story was that after the first person broke their leg trying to remove the tree and after the remainder of the workmen refused to work on the boss said 'poppy-cock' or words to that affect, 'I will do it, let me in that digger' and as he hurriedly climbed the steps of the excavator in his muddy wellingtons he slipped and broke his leg. I don't know if as many as four people broke their legs but there was at least two.

What my little bit of research did show is that the belief is more prevalent in Northern ireland as the following online definition shows.

fair·y thorn (plural fair·y thorns)

noun

Definition:

Northern Ireland hawthorn bush: a hawthorn bush left growing in the middle of a field through fear that misfortune would befall whoever chopped it down

I like to start a blog with a photograph and here is one I made earlier, literally!! I built these pillars a number of years ago and had the gates made in a traditional 'Ulster Style' by Walker Brothers of Ballyward. The round hoops are not only decorative but to add strength to the gate to stop it sagging. The hoops are made by the Walkers using a set of Rollers that have been in their black-smithing family for generations. The rollers are like an old fashioned 'Mangle' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangle_(machine) used to dry clothes except that in this case there are 3 rollers and the straight metal bar is fed in on it's edge, as the curvature of the hoop is increased the rollers are screwed in closer and the bar is fed in a second or third time. Like all these skills and traditions they are at risk of dying out, in mass production gate manufacture these hoops would be cut out of sheets of steel using Lasers I presume. I have taken this photo from the Northern Ireland Tourist Board Library and apparently we, ie people in the Tourism trade, are permitted to use these photos, but why then I wonder is the NITB logo still in the middle of the photo. I think it a bit of an irony that they claim copyright to the image but I had a major contribution in the formation of the image, funny I was aware of that when I was building the gate and pillars; that they would be used to frame photographs of the Mournes.

By the way, talking of gates sagging, the correct way to climb a gate, if it has to be done at all, is to climb it on the hinge or hanger side this avoids putting a strain on the gate and causing it to sag. The current advice in 'gate construction' is to cement a flat stone tightly under the locking side of the gate so that if it is climbed on that side the potential damage is limited.

I was checking out some material on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and came across a great resource based on a programme called 'Your Place and Mine' which is a local BBC Northern Ireland programme broadcast every Saturday morning from 8.00 a.m. to 9.00a.m. and has 12 regional reporters from towns and regions right across the country.

It appears that whatever story the programme covered they added it to their website with more information and audio clips of the original programme. One of the best of these is the feature on the tunnellers who formed the tunnel under the Mourne Mountains to divert the Annalong River to top up the Silent Valley Reservoir in order to maintain a supply of water to the ever avaricious City of Belfast. To view this material click on the link below and see where it takes you

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/yourplaceandmine/down/A727328.shtml