Rocco and Me

Sir Rocco Forte

My old friend and mentor Carl Spielvogel told me ‘always go to the CEO. Anything else is a waste of time”.

Last week we were in Manchester, England, working with The BBC.

We booked into the Rocco Forte hotel in Manchester. The Lowry.

It’s supposed to be the best hotel in Manchester, so I was a bit surprised when we discovered only one electrical outlet in the room.

Then I tried to get online and could not get a WiFi signal, so I called the desk.

“We don’t have WiFi” the woman at the desk told me. We have “Internet” but you have to plug in.

“Are you kidding me?”

But to argue was pointless.

And….they charged £15 a day for Internet access.

This was really annoying.

Talking to the desk was pointless, so I wired up, paid up and shot off an email to Sir Rocco Forte, who owns the hotel and the chain.

They don’t give you his email address, so I sent it to his ‘for more information’ address and asked them to forward it to him.

I told Sir Rocco that in this day and age, providing only one electrical outlet in a hotel room (and a new hotel!) was insane.

We had come to Manchester with 2 laptops, an iPad, an iPod an iPhone and a Blackberry. How were we supposed to keep them charged with one plug in the room? And this was a new hotel!

The lack of WiFi was shocking.

This is 2010, not 1996.  They have WiFi in Starbucks for crying out loud.

But worst was the charge of £15 a day for the WiFi access.

This I found particularly annoying, as the hotel did nothing to ‘create’ the WiFi. It’s not like they were making Internet access in the kitchen.

All they did was pass it along, and then charge £15 a day for it.

I called the desk.

The hotel has 165 rooms.

At £15 a night, that’s an additional income of £75,000 a month or just shy of £ 1 million a year for doing nothing.

It’s like charging us for fresh air if we opened the windows.

Four hours after I hit ‘send’ I got a visit from the General Manger of the hotel.

They put 10 new outlets in the room.

Then, they installed a WiFi transponder in the room so I got broadband WiFi.

At dinner that night, we received free champagne and free wine, compliments of the head of dining, who visited our table several times to make sure everything was OK.

Needless to say, the rest of the week proved very pleasant.

Which only goes to prove, as Carl Spielvogel says, if you have a problem go directly to the CEO.