Melksham Hotel, B and B or business accommodation?
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-01-20 08:02:51 - Graham EllisWhat IS "Well House Manor"? The following is a draft of what I'll be saying at the Food and Drink festival launch tomorrow morning .. posted here because it gives as really good overview of what we are!
I would like to welcome you to Well House Manor, to the launch breakfast for the Melksham Food and Drink Festival for 2010 [link] which runs from 25th June to 4th July. The first food and drink festival in Melksham, last year, was a great success - for the people of Melksham, for the participants and for the sponsors, and would like to thank the organisers for all their hard work and wish them an even greater success this year.
We call Well House Manor "Business Accommodation". I'm now in my 10th year of presenting training courses on niche computer subjects in Melksham. And as the subjects I teach are specialised, delegates come from all over the south west, and indeed from all over the British Isles and on occasions from further afield. No matter where we were located, the majority of delegates would have to stay in the area as we'ld be beyond a reasonable daily commute. We chose Melksham largely because of the availability of a suitable building, and very much fell on our feet - and we found ourselves acting as a "daytime hotel" - helping people make their travel plans and arranging the final stages of their transport from airport or railway station, introducing them to the area, helping them choose places to eat of an evening, and providing conferencing facilities - lectures, catered lunches, etc. After courses, delegates went to stay at the local hotel or B&B of their choice - and when we opened there were as many as five such establishments in the mile from the town to our training centre.
It's lonely as a single visitor to a town, going down to eat on your own or sitting solitary at a restaurant table ... and the business visitor may want to arrive very late, have a light and early breakfast, check in to a room that's got a spacious desk for him to work, with unlimited internet access, unlimited fresh coffee on tap (this is the IT industry!) and a large screen, many-channelled TV. He may want to pay for the accommodation as part of his course, and if he doesn't, it's likely he'll pay via his Visa, MasterCard or American Express. Over the five years from 2000 to 2005, our courses grew, and the availability of local accommodation shrank. At the same time, our delegates numbers grew, as did the specification they required at their accommodation.. In 2006 we took the plunge and bought "The Old Manor" where you're having breakfast, shut down for the summer for a major refurbishment, and reopened for delegates under a rebranded name - "Well House Manor".
It turned out (we thought that it might!) that professionals visiting other companies in Melksham area also looking for accommodation that offers a flexible and friendly welcome, superb rooms (please - go upstairs after breakfast and have a look at rooms 3 and 4 which are open for viewing) and high tech IT facilities ... but they don't need on site bars, an evening restaurant, or to have a porter to hand 24 x 7 in the middle of their stay. So ... we're now open to other business visitors too. We have a simple pricing structure, we happily let double rooms (all our rooms are doubles) as singles, and we offer a modest reduction to Melksham Chamber of Commerce members to reflect our reduced marketing costs to local businesses. Chamber members pay just 60 pounds, plus VAT, per room per night ... no extras, no matter how much internet you use or how much coffee you drink. Yes - we ARE also open for leisure visitors to Melksham, and we encourage them to stay with us if our particular mix suits them - booking by phone and online. Melksham has been christened the "Takeaway capital of Wiltshire". And there's a wide variety of places to eat out, and to buy your own food too. In my ten years in Melksham, I can only think of one pub that has closed down, whereas it would be many more if we followed the national trend. The weekly market reopened in December. There are two major food retailers in the process of moving to / opening in the town, and just last week another takeaway opened. Busy? Customers were queueing out the door when I tried them out ... there's clearly a market there, and a growing market as Melksham grows with over a thousand new houses under construction / authorised.