{"id":5456,"date":"2009-11-27T10:43:47","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T08:43:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=5456"},"modified":"2009-11-28T14:57:45","modified_gmt":"2009-11-28T12:57:45","slug":"leechie-marketing-sweet-and-westin-grand-hotel-sour-service-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/leechie-marketing-sweet-and-westin-grand-hotel-sour-service-awards\/","title":{"rendered":"Leechie Marketing Sweet and Westin Grand Hotel Sour Service Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Sweet Service Award<\/strong> goes to Michelle Ladewig, from Leechie Marketing, the Whale Cottage designer.\u00a0\u00a0 Michelle was asked\u00a0if she could finalise the WhaleTales newsletter on Sunday evening, for it to go out early on Monday, but to incorporate the winners of the Eat Out Top 10\u00a0Restaurant Awards, which were only announced at about 22h00 that evening.\u00a0\u00a0 The Top 10 list was sent to Michelle by sms from the function, while\u00a0the paragraphs summarising the evening were e-mailed\u00a0after the event.\u00a0 By midnight the newsletter was completed and proofread, ready to be sent out the next morning!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Sour Service Award<\/strong> goes to the Westin Grand Hotel, at which the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards took place.\u00a0\u00a0 Problems encountered by guests paying R 650 per ticket were warm sparkling wine served on arrival, warm white wine and water\u00a0served at the table, no ice buckets brought to the tables to keep the wine and water\u00a0cold, staff not respecting one’s space, squashing past one, red wine requested instead of white wine did not arrive, and worst of all, the airconditioning did not work properly, making it unbearably warm in the ballroom.\u00a0 As New Media Publishing\u00a0was not addressing the problems, the F&B Manager was called, and the problems explained.\u00a0\u00a0 He made an improvement as far as wine temperature and supply of red wine was concerned, but could not fix the aircon problem.\u00a0\u00a0 It seemed that the staff were untrained for the event, and that\u00a0there was no senior management staff on duty (it being a Sunday,\u00a0a favourite day for senior hotel staff to take the day off!).\u00a0\u00a0 Luckily the food preparation was done by the top chefs attending the function, and their food could not be faulted at all.\u00a0\u00a0Eben, the F&B Director of the hotel, called early on Monday, after reading the WhaleTales blog post about the Eat Out evening, and apologised for the problems.\u00a0 He explained that it was a difficult function to service, and admitted that the airconditioning was not operating effectively, and that they could not get it fixed the previous evening.\u00a0\u00a0 The Westin Grand Hotel had\u00a0the top chefs and food lovers from around the country attending the function, who were being lauded for their food quality and service excellence, yet they themselves could not deliver,\u00a0which was\u00a0a poor reflection not only on the hotel but also on New Media, Eat Out and its sponsors Prudential and Veritas wines.<\/p>\n

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards<\/strong>\u00a0are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.\u00a0 Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at <\/span>info@whalecottage.com<\/span><\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales <\/span><\/strong>newsletters on the <\/span>www.whalecottage.com<\/span><\/a> website.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sweet Service Award goes to Michelle Ladewig, from Leechie Marketing, the Whale Cottage designer.\u00a0\u00a0 Michelle was asked\u00a0if she could finalise the WhaleTales newsletter on Sunday evening, for it to go out early on Monday, but to incorporate the winners of the Eat Out Top 10\u00a0Restaurant Awards, which were only announced at about 22h00 that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3,124,20,248,21],"tags":[32378,2679,2877,2873,2878,2875,2876,2802,32373,2874,1771],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t