UK hotels hit by Basil Fawlty syndrome

UK hotels hit by Basil Fawlty syndrome

It seems the Basil Fawlty-styled image of British hoteliers being rude and incompetent is hard to shake for foreign tourists.

UK hotels in general, and London hotels in particular, have come bottom of the class for courtesy in a Europe-wide survey of travellers by reservation company Hotel.info.

For friendliness and competence of staff, UK hotels and those in Russia scored the lowest marks in a table topped by Finland, with Germany second and Austria third.

In a separate table covering friendliness and competence of hotel staff in European capitals, London was last, with Hungarian capital Budapest first.

Hotel.info also published a similar courtesy table based just on UK cities. Sheffield, with 8.62 points out of 10, was top, followed by Leeds (8.41 points), Bristol (8.36) and Cardiff (8.31).

London (7.73 points) languished in 10th place in the UK table, with Birmingham 11th with 7.66 points and Coventry 12th with 7.38 points.

Hotel.info said: “British politeness is renowned and recognised throughout the world.

“However, in the hotels the staff do not score highly in comparison with their European colleagues in respect of friendliness and willingness to be of help.

“Some cities are able to save the good reputation of British politeness. Sheffield scored well for friendliness and willingness to assist their guests.

“However, the two largest cities (London and Birmingham) do not exactly shine in respect of the quality of their service.”

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