Monday 28 January 2013

Famous! G Boutique - Four in a Bed






In England we have a television competition, called ‘Four in a Bed’, that puts four different hotels in competition with each other.  The programme runs over 5 nights, the owners of each hotel stay at the other hotels in turn and then mark the hotel they have stayed in on different categories of comfort, cleanliness and convenience.  At the end of the week one of the hotels is crowned the winner.  Last week saw our very own Senior Marketing Consultant; Allan Gray’s hotel The G Boutique featured in the programme.

Allan’s hotel opened last Summer and has been very nearly fully booked since day one.  It is an independent hotel of character, elegance and luxury.  Each room has its own little quirky personality.  A luxury buffet / a la carte breakfast is included in the price as well as free wifi broadband.  Wide screen freeview HD TV is standard in all rooms.



The TV programme caught a lot of the character of the hotel,  although obviously couldn’t do it the justice it deserved in the short time it was on.  It makes compelling viewing, with the ‘game playing’ from some of the other contestants – after all it is a competition, however what was very clear was how professional the service was from Ellie and Jason (the managers) and how comfortable and attractive the hotel is.


If you’d like to watch the (second) episode that features G Boutique click here.
 
To see the results of the competition (although if you don’t have the time – the answer is at the bottom of this blog ;-) click here:


For more information on the hotel and to see pictures









Ellie and Jason won! Of course!

Wednesday 9 January 2013

New man at the helm!

Andrew Edwards

With Peter now gone we introduce our new principal. Someone who not only has a long teaching and marketing career behind him, but also has keen inspection experience.  Andrew Edwards, 44, came to us from Bristol at the start of 2012 to "do the best possible job to keep the students, the staff and the agents happy" he says.


Andrew with Alan - gaining wisdom from the master ;-)
With a 20 year career in Germany, Italy and the UK, fluency in German and Italian, and also with experience of teaching in the state sector, he brings with him a very fresh, and welcome view on what we do. 

Andrew's experience of working in the accommodation and marketing division, means he not only has new ideas, but the ability to see them to fulfilment, the result being that LSI already has a new self-catering student house available, and has more in the pipeline.

With the recent UKBA regulations LSI, like many schools, had an ISI inspection late last year, and while we are very proud of having had many very successful British Council inspections until now, this was a new experience for us. We were extremely grateful to be able to draw on Andrew's knowledge of inspections from being an IALC inspector since 2007 and the guidance he was able to give us.

Portsmouth, featuring Gunwharf Quays, has a great music scene, an excellent range of restaurants and a lovely long coast line, Andrew has now found his feet in the town and we hope he manages to find time to discover all that the city has to offer, and indulge his love of music, food and running.  We are sure we will have many succesful years working together.