Some prizes are well worth fighting for and managing the great British public’s expectations can’t be easy, particularly in the accommodation and hospitality industry where competition is fierce and standards are scrutinised regularly. But some of the leading hotel groups must have trophy cabinets and mantlepieces groaning with awards for setting and maintaining high benchmarks, especially when it comes to customer satisfaction and value for money.
Unsurprisingly, the Britannia Group of hotels (owners of Pontins at Camber Sands) have just picked up an award which they must wish they had not, as for the eighth consecutive year, they have been rated the worst hotel chain, according to a survey by ‘Which’ consumer group after collating feedback from 4,000 customers.
Britannia received only one star rating for its communal areas and only two stars for its customer services and overall it received a customer service score of just 37%, whilst top place went to Sofitel with 86% which knocked the Premier Inn out of first place.
As I say, it is unsurprising that Britannia scored so badly, as I wrote an article in the summer entitled “Paradise or Hell?” which featured the experiences of some of the paying guests at Pontins in Camber, generally a miserable experience by anyone’s standards and, yes, it is budget accommodation so you do not expect five star bells and whistles, but you do expect cleanliness and that the basic accommodation is habitable at the very least.
The Pontins holiday camp is set in around 32 acres with around 820 self catering ‘chalets’ and with a total capacity of around 3,000. The camp was built in 1968, but it seems that not much has changed since then, but still the customers keep coming year after year so they must be doing something right, right?
Image Credits: Nick Forman .