Main Content

The changing Hotel and Bed and Breakfast business in Melksham

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2012-01-18 14:10:45 - Graham Ellis

It still surprises me how quickly things change in the hotel and catering business. But I suppose it shouldn't. When we opened our training centre in Melksham in 2000 there were numerous places that course delegates could stay, and were suitable. But by 2005 that had shrunk to a handful, to such an extent that we opened our own hotel in 2006. Up to that point, we maintained a list of local accommodation for delegates, but that's really no longer appropriate for us to do, with 90% of delegates who stay in the area choosing to stay with us, and most of the remaining 10% being placed by their employers at the nearest Premier Inn / Travel Lodge / Holiday Inn because that is where their company always stay.

It shouldn't surprise me, either, at the tremendous changes we've seen in just the first six years at Well House Manor. Our original intent was to provide delegate accommodation, but we now find we're getting quite full on some nights even when no course is running. And with that, we've moved from a tiny team to a team that's still small for what we do - but we do a lot. 16 shifts a week, hotel staffed 7 days a week, from 06:30 / 07:30 to 21:00 / 22:00, with any member of the team pretty well able to deal with every customers needs at any time. We've learned to provide far better customer service too - even though we were pretty good at the start and have built up a clientele of returning guests from early days.

Materially, things change too. What was originally a very fast broadband connection would be regarded as laughably slow today - we're now up to 100 Mbit/ second and going up to 120 Mbit in the next few months (I believe this speed is 3 times BT's Infinity top speed!). One room has already been repainted, and a couple of our rooms are having some refurbishment work done next week to keep them "as new" and replace things that haven't worked quite as well in practice as they should in theory - we're doing these things BEFORE anyone notes that they look at all in need. A new smoking shelter has been installed - a luxury one, and the new lighting is solar powered so that it's away from the entrance, automatic, and welcoming even in the winter.


Our list of local hotels, 2006 vintage, has remained online as a service. Many of the places with a lesser internet present have found it to be a useful source of links / business / information on them, and we work with these people - for old time's sake as well as for the community good. However things change surprisingly quickly in the hotel business - owners move, move out of the B&B business, or pass on and need to be removed from the lists.

And so, the pages remain, but where somewhere is to be removed I'm adding links to this article. It won't remove their presence from so many other sites that have sprung up, it won't clear the Google caches - but it will bring them to this page which provides a current link to someone offering accommodation here in Melksham. And if Well House Manor isn't what they're looking for, I can also provide a link back to the Melksham Hotel website to look at other alternatives.