Page 13 - Club Rockley

Part of our “Sales pitch” for the apartments had been our intention to produce room revenue for those buyers who wished to place their unit in the hotel “rental pool”. This proved to be much more difficult than we had expected. It was not difficult to produce a good profit in winter , with the Canadian market particularly enjoying the self catering apartments we had created : but summer was a different matter with some low occupan- cy, and the early returns for our owners were rather disappointing; indeed, not until the arrival of Freddie Laker and his charter operation via Luxembourg, and all the charter airlines that followed, including Airtours, TUI/Thomsons, and Thomas Cook, was Rockley’s summer occupancy to improve.
The first phase was not without its amusing moments, the late (and sorely missed) Alfred Taylor was a huge character and a totally professional Hotel “opening manager’. Alfred had worked, with some distinction, for the American Hilton Hotels chain and also for a very large German Hotel group, for several years prior to opening the “Rockley Resort”. However, Alfred’s methods were highly individualistic,
To say the least. He maintained that the best way to find competent staff was to advertise the many and various Job Vacancies then to have a “dry run” of a four week opening period, and on an on- ging basis to fire the unfortunate applicants who were ‘not going to make it’ as soon as he could decently make that decision, and to then replace them with the next people on the list! And so on until he had got the team he wanted.
Alfred maintained that scrutiny of CV’s and holding lengthy interviews were all a complete waste of time as the applicants always had help in assembling the former and advice on dissembling for the latter!
One day , just after our official opening, Peter Brown came into an office where Peter Boos and myself were chatting over coffee: “Alfred has just fired a guest, in the lobby, chaps !” , he said “Well,” Peter Boos responded, “we must hope that he didn’t pay the guest severance money ! “
I miss Alfred Taylor, and always will. He was one of the good guys, one of the best - both on and off the cricket field.
The second phase followed soon after the completion of the first, with the “Bushy Park” and Lemon Arbour” clusters of 46 and 0
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