HPH News - January Edition 2018

A note from Julia Hands:

Dear All

At the end of another year I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your
contribution to the success of Hand Picked Hotels. I recognise the significant effort you make in
the job that you do and am very much appreciative of that.

2017 has been a very busy year with many on-going and new challenges. The economic
environment remains difficult and whilst we have increased our overall revenues the
improvement in profit is much less marked due to increased costs across many lines.

Seiont Manor Hotel was sold in December 2016 so we started this year with 19 hotels in our
collection. However this number increased to 20 with the purchase of Stanbrook Abbey Hotel in
March 2017. Stanbrook is a beautiful property with a fascinating history. Only six years ago it
was a fully functioning abbey inhabited by nuns who enjoyed its peace and serenity. It has the
most beautiful chapel and many other unique architectural features. The vendors who sold it to
us converted the abbey into an events centre which hosted weddings, car launches and
conferences. They added a very modern extension to the front of the building which now serves
as the entrance and bar. We have plans to improve the facilities in the hotel and to increase the
number of bedrooms whilst preserving the stunning buildings and their wonderful history. The
Daily Telegraph was so impressed when they reviewed the hotel that they awarded it 9/10 which
is a superb result.

We have this month launched our revised Hand Picked Vision and Values. The original vision and
values were conceived in the very early days of Hand Picked and after 16 years they were due for
a review. The revised vision is much shorter than the old one it replaces. The old one was right
for its time and spoke of the aim of creating an architecturally splendid collection of stunning
properties. This aim has very largely been achieved and the new vision speaks of the experience
we offer our guests and the feelings that experience engenders in our guests and in ourselves.
The values have increased from 4 to 5 and whilst very similar to the old ones are hopefully easier
to understand and adopt. At the heart of our values is Family with Welcoming, Individuality,
Initiative and Local Engagement surrounding that.

One final development this year is that Hand Picked Hotels has become the official main sponsor
of Guernsey Football Club. The players are unpaid but the expenses of the club are still
considerable: for example air fares to the mainland and back have to be found for not only the
Guernsey team’s away matches but also for the away teams coming to play in Guernsey. Already
the profile of St Pierre Park has been raised considerably by this sponsorship and I am very
hopeful that this will relationship will develop and be mutually beneficial to both the hotel and
the club.

I wish you all and your families a very happy Christmas and a prosperous and healthy New Year.

Julia Hands
Chairman & CEO

Where are you from? Audleys Wood Hotel

At Audleys Wood we have a large World Map in our Canteen
and all the team members have pinpointed where they are
from. We have over 14 different nationalities represented
here, and it has been really interesting and generated lots of
conversation about where team members were born, also
finding out different customs and facts from their respective
country.

Vision and Values Launch Week

The week started with Paul Morgan presenting the new Hand
Picked Vision and Values, welcoming everyone in many different
languages.

Refreshments were served which included Tunworth Cheese tarts,
Watercress Soup and Strawberry Pavlova. All using locally sourced
produce.

We received really positive feedback after watching Julia Hands’
message and some of the comments were:- inspiring, refreshing,
proud, professional

Everyone who attended the presentation was given their own personal
water bottle displaying the Hand Picked values.

Audleys Wood Hotel

The week continued with Bingo, focusing on the Family value. All
team members were given a bingo card and were encouraged to
find a colleague who matched one description on a square. For
example another colleague who ‘owned a pet’, ‘Was born in the
same month as you’ or ‘has brown eyes’ etc. The first to complete
2 rows were given a prize! But everyone received some chocolate
coins.
Mapping the Guest experience
We ran a mapping session around the Guest Experience, the Family
value and in particular, how we welcome our guests and our team
members. It didn’t surprise us that many of the prompt words
were duplicated across each of the guest and team member
welcome boards, i.e. listen, caring, memories, friendly, respected,
smiley, genuine, helpful etc.

We also set the HOD’s and Supervisors the
challenge to Make An Egg Fly! They embraced
the challenge with enthusiasm, initiative and
individuality. They all passed the test and no eggs
were broken in the process.

The Wedding Cup competition was a company wide competition and we finished 3rd.
We converted £207.3k for weddings in a 3 month period!!
It was a knockout style competition and we were therefore up against a lot of really tough
competition.

Bailbrook House Hotel

Hand Picked Vision & Values Launch

Here are some of the activities during launch week

Launch day, Chef was patiently waiting to show off his
local produce of venison, cheese and scallops.
Yes you guessed it. Chef’s table was ‘Local Engagement’
Chef and Paul, our Maintenance Manager also focussed
on local charities and work experience placements

Everyone attending the launch
added their fingerprint and their
name to the Bailbrook Family Tree
which is now on display in the Staff
Canteen.

Here in the background the team are mapping the
experience for our VISION where guests feel special and
colleagues feel like family.
Ellie and Nic focussed on the Family value and played ‘Rely
on your team mates’ with Lego – this was the noisiest table
in the room!

Our other family tree!
Each tag is a commitment to a value following the
launch.
The tree now sits in our Staff Canteen where team
members have added more commitments to it

Bailbrook House Hotel

Christmas at Bailbrook House

Meet Dasher, one
of our party
reindeer

Anita, our Deputy
Head Housekeeper is
in the Christmas spirit
with her Antlers

Merry Christmas from ALL at Bailbrook House!

Buxted Park Hotel

VISION AND VALUES LAUNCH
We launched the new Hand Picked Vision and Values to the Buxted team. We carried out 4
sessions over 2 days with a fantastic total of 76 attendees! Everyone enjoyed themselves and we
had a few giggles along the way …………….

Andrew launched the sessions and showed
everyone Julia’s video to an enthusiastic
crowd.

“A welcoming country house experience where guests
feel special and colleagues feel like family”

Welcome
Rob and Marc in the Red room carrying

out a ‘good manners’ quiz.

Individuality
Sarah and Rob in the George V Suite. A
treasure hunt around the hotel to see how

‘individual’ Buxted is.

Initiative
Becca, Abi and Sean in the Coat of Arms.
Who built the highest spaghetti and marshmallow

tower?

Local Engagement
Chef and Jose in the cinema.
Everyone got ‘stuck in’ tasting local produce.

Buxted Park Hotel

Family
Andrew and Maria in the Ballroom.
We made ourselves at home in robes and slippers
while finding out about our colleagues.

Lunch was enjoyed A record turnout of casuals on the Tuesday
evening!

We had some welcome support on the Tuesday:
Thank you Lesley!

Monthly ‘Celebrating Success’ Luncheon
Our monthly Celebrating Success Luncheon continues; our last lunch was on 7th December.
The following team members have carried out BE
ME this month:

Anna from Bar worked in the Kitchen
Vadims from the Bar worked in Reception
Vad spun the sunflower to receive complimentary
B&B at the hotel.

Andrew, Becca and Marc were delighted to be
able to hand over a cheque for over £3,000 to
our nominated charity, The Oscar’s Wish
Foundation.

Central Support - Sevenoaks

Asset Team
The Asset team are busy working on a number of refurbishment projects throughout the group,
as well as day-to-day capital expenditure and on-going maintenance issues.
We ran two Maintenance Managers conferences during November, one at Nutfield and the
other at Rookery. The focus of the conferences was about maintaining the standard of our
assets. Representatives from Housekeeping and Procurement also attended the conferences to
help with collaboration between the departments.

The team were also busy working on R&M budgets for 2018, finishing off 2017 capex projects
and starting to focus on Capex projects for 2018.
Projects for 2017 being finalised includes:

• New electronic door locks to all 131 bedrooms and refurbishing the Amber Lounge at St
Pierre Park.

• Completion of the upper and lower car parks at Bailbrook.
• Installation of a new fire alarm system at Rhinefield House.
• Works have also been completed on the staff accommodation at Buxted Park, Grand

Jersey and Ettington Park including formation of new staff offices.

Central Support - Sevenoaks

Matt Ashton, Group Executive Head Chef - Food & Beverage
It has been a busy quarter within the F&B teams; here is an overview of what we have been
doing.
Head Chef Workshop -4th October
This the second of the annual workshops for the Head Chefs that was hosted at Woodlands Park
Hotel, it is always good to see all of the Head Chefs in one room with a huge wealth of
experience between them discussing ideas and “Chewing the fat” as the saying goes.
It was a full day of discussions, networking and information sharing on items such as recruitment,
retention, talent banking, maintaining Breakfast standards, Procure Wizard, financials, Opera
training and menu updates including a guest supplier to show case their products ready in time
for Christmas.
F&B Workshop- 30-21st October
This year the conference was hosted at Rhinefield and kicked off with cider tasting with one of
the producers on premium ciders and then followed by an excellent Mexican themed informal
dinner buffet. The Rhinefield team really did a tremendous effort of theming the whole evening
from the food, drink, table decorations, music and even the odd Mexican moustache on the staff
members. A really good example on how we can be flexible and think outside the box especially
for our conference market!
Sous Chef Workshop 7th November
The development of Sous Chefs is a priority to me and like the Head Chefs we do 2 development
workshops a year with the main intention of developing and for them to meet and network with
each other. The Agenda was exactly the same as the Head chefs with the added training session-
Procure wizard update and refresher training.
Procure Wizard
Now the first stage of Procure Wizard is complete with all food suppliers on board giving 100%
allergen information. It was time to make sure we are completing our beverage menus and
having correct allergen information for them. The F&B Managers had a training session with me
at the F&B workshop in November on how to build recipes, dishes and menus with Allergen
information.
ResDiary
Afternoon Tea has always been
strong with Hand Picked Hotels and
we wanted a big push to increase
more local traffic into our hotels for
October and November and it was
agreed to offer a promotion, which
was a 2 for 1 prosecco afternoon Tea.
This was a huge success and we sold
all vouchers within 48 hours of
opening the offer up. In total we sold
1659 vouchers worth a total of £48k.
We used Resdairy as a platform for the guests to book online straight into each of the hotels
diaries. The Graph above shows how many people had the 2 for 1 prosecco promotion at each
hotel, well done to Rookery Hall for the highest amount, closely followed by Crathorne Hall.

Central Support - Sevenoaks

HR Team Update
The results of the VUES survey highlighted that only 42.6% of us agreed there was great team
work across all departments in Sevenoaks, so we have been working hard to improve this.
On 28 September the Sevenoaks team arrived at Brandshatch Place to take part in their team
building challenge!
We were split into teams and each team had to solve problems in order to get clues. We all had
blank separate squares with which we had to draw only part of objects on and colour in, and at
the end we had to work out how our squares fitted together to form a completed puzzle.
Thank you to Brandshatch and The Holt for hosting this event for us.

Central Support - Sevenoaks

Matt’s Kitchen has been very busy this
quarter!
On 11 October for National Chocolate week
Matt showed us how to make Dinner Jacket
Strawberries, and on 24 November Matt
showed the team how to make Vegetable
Flowers!

MacMillan Coffee Morning
We held a MacMillan Coffee Morning on
the same day as Matt’s Kitchen and raised
a total of £144.22 which is great! Thanks
to Matt for his hard work setting
everything up, Megan for suggesting the
Coffee Morning, and all those who
contributed.
Well done to Alison Head who was the
winner of “Best Baker” with her lemon
drizzle cake.
Halloween
For Halloween we showcased our creative skills and participated in Pumpkin Carving!

Central Support - Sevenoaks

Vision & Values Week
We had a fantastic week at Sevenoaks celebrating the launch of our new Vision and Values.
On Monday 4th December we embraced our “Welcoming” value with Matt preparing a breakfast
for everyone. We were welcomed by Douglas and then treated to pancakes, strawberries, hot
chocolate with marshmallows and other goodies! We also saw the launch of our new video.
On Tuesday we focused on “Individuality” with Lesley Bacon organising a superb day of health
and wellbeing.
Wednesday & Thursday we went off site to Buxted and Chilston to focus on all the values by
taking part in team activities, including a challenge to make an egg fly!
And finally on Friday we arranged a family lunch, with each team member bringing in an item of
food or drink to contribute to the feast.

Central Support - Sevenoaks

Marketing Update
Bedroom Upgrade on the Website
The “upgrade your room” functionality has been implemented in the booking process. This
automatically proposes the next highest room category for the applicable price difference.
Adding this feature saw 213 room upgrades in the first month of implementation.

The Crown Promotion
We launched a special promotion of 25% off feature rooms
and suites in association with the release of The Crown:
Season One on DVD and Blu-Ray to encourage our guests
to ‘live like royalty’. This promotion also included afternoon
tea, £30 voucher towards dinner and entry into our
competition to win the ultimate royal experience.

2 for 1 Prosecco Afternoon Tea
We launched a 3 day sale to fill afternoon tea dining
covers during October and November. This worked
exceptionally on social media, due to the special low
price of £29 for 2. This offer sold 1,659 vouchers,
generating £48K worth of revenue.

Meetings & Events
We returned to the Square Meal Venues & Events Live exhibition
in September to promote our meeting spaces and private dining
rooms. We had a prominent position close to the entrance and
scanned more than 3,000 sales lead contacts for future marketing.

Loyalty Promotion
In November, we launched a ‘50% off points sale’ for loyalty stays in January and early February.
This resulted in around 317 room nights booked in the first month. We are hoping this will
further incentivise guests to join and remain in our loyalty club.

Central Support - Sevenoaks

Quality & Training Update
Another busy quarter for the Quality & Training team….
Service Champion Workshops
Following the launch of the new Being Hand Picked programme at Stanbrook Abbey, regional
workshops were held for Service Champions to present the updated training material. It was
great to see so many new enthusiastic Service Champions and those who have been delivering
Being Hand Picked for a while were very positive about how the Rise & Shine principles had been
incorporated into the programme to complement our key behaviour messages.

A big thank you to Rookery, Stanbrook, Chilston and Audleys for hosting the workshops.

Service Champions
from Stanbrook
Abbey, New Hall,
Fawsley Hall and
Ettington Park ready
for dinner at
Stanbrook Abbey

Service Champions from
Norton House, Rookery
Hall, CRO, Crathorne
Hall and Wood Hall
enjoying pre dinner
drinks at Rookery Hall

Central Support - Sevenoaks

Service Champions from Chilston, More cocktails being enjoyed by Service
Brands, Hendon, Buxted and Nutfield Champions from Bailbrook, Audleys,
enjoying a cocktail (non-alcoholic of Rhinefield and Woodlands before lunch at
course!) before lunch at Chilston Audleys

F&B Managers Conference
The conference started with a
Mexican buffet courtesy of the
team at Rhinefield

Presentations were given by
representatives from Aspall
Cyder, Twinings and Bibendum

And Matt Ashton did training on
building drinks menus on
Procure Wizard

We also discussed a new programme for next year called the ‘Hand Picked Restaurant School’
which will include modules on technical skills, etiquette, brand standards and menu product
knowledge. A busy and interesting conference.

Reception Managers Conference
Our conference this year was held at the beautiful Stanbrook Abbey and started with a 3 course
dinner, welcoming our new Reception Managers to the team. The following day we had
presentations from Ewen Moore on Recruitment, Helen, Ellie and Andrea on the Reception
Academy, Lesley on the Touchpoints for a guest stay and also the front office results for 2017 so
far. Work was then carried out on targets to move the Q&S Front Office results forward which all
Reception Managers set and agreed to. The day finished with some Twinings Product knowledge
training and tea tasting.

Central Support - Sevenoaks

We have run 9 Practical Training Certificate programmes regionally this year for departmental
managers/supervisors to support our ‘back to basics’ focus. This is an external programme from
People 1st, the aim of which is to teach trainers to deliver 1:1 practical skills in an engaging way
for their trainees.

Flow Hospitality now known as O.W.L. – Online Work Learning. We are currently working to
build the platform which will be launched in the New Year. This will give you the opportunity to
undertake interactive training modules online and will be how we will record your training from
the end of January onwards.

Procurement Update
Procure Wizard
I am pleased to report that the Procure Wizard phase 2 was successfully implemented on 2
October. All Ad hoc suppliers are now on the system enabling all orders to be placed.
Our new team member in Procurement, Shantelle Westaway (pictured right) is
busy collating all information for the launch of Procure Wizard in the Channel
Islands next March.

F&B Steering group
The trial of the new drinks menus at Fawsley and Rookery has been very
successful. In 10 weeks there has been a 12% uplift in premium spirit
purchases at Rookery and 18.5% at Fawsley.
At the F&B conference it was therefore decided to roll out this menu concept to the rest of the
group. The design of the menus and cover will be adapted to reflect the new visual identity.

Finance Update

The Finance Team have successfully completed the Budgets for 2017/18 and we now have
renewed targets for every hotel to aim for. The team enjoyed meeting the hotel senior
leadership teams at the budget review meetings over a period of two weeks. The Financial Year
end was on the 30th November and all the hotel finance teams completed their figures by the
end of the following week. In November, our external auditors BDO came in to Sevenoaks to
discuss their strategy for their audit of the Group early next year. The auditors work with us
every year from January through to the final sign off in July.

The team have also been working with our PCI consultants to ensure that we are working
towards achieving PCI compliancy certification. Currently the assessment score is that we have
reached 93% compliancy standard for the Group so there is a little way to go. The certification
will allow us to be confident that we are doing as much as possible to safeguard any customer
credit card data that is handled at Hand Picked.

Recently, we have invested some time in exploring the security of our current banking systems
and the way we accept payments in our hotels and online. Although, fraud instances are rare
and small scale at Hand Picked, we have noticed a trend upwards that we need to protect and
remain vigilant against. The team have met with Elavon, our card acquirer, to discuss a project
whereby we upgrade the security of booking transactions online and also take measures to
secure PDQ terminals at all our hotels.

Chilston Park Hotel

Vision & Values Launch

launch of We had an eventful and great team building week to celebrate the
the new Vision and Values.

The hotel came together in different sessions across the week to learn the
new vision and to understand the meaning behind the values.

We chose to ‘Make an Egg Fly’ for the Family session and the teams across the hotel enjoyed
working together and using their competitiveness to make the winning flyers.

At the end of the sessions we asked all employees to commit to one value related aim which they
would focus on in the forthcoming year, they placed their commitment on our family tree.

Chilston Park Hotel

We invited local children from Lenham Primary School to decorate our external Christmas tree.
They made decorations in class time and then a group of the children came and visited the hotel
on Thursday 7th December 2017 and placed their decorations on the tree.

After decorating the tree the children enjoyed a hot chocolate packed with marshmallows.

Employee of the Year
We were delighted to announce at our employee Christmas lunch our Employee of the Year

winner - Victoria Franklin, Senior Sales & Events Co-ordinator.

Victoria won Employee of the Month twice and
was also nominated a further 3 months
throughout the year.
Victoria was promoted to Senior Sales & Events
Co-ordinator this year and has shown maturity,
depth of understanding and interest in
progressing her position and department.
Her calmness and capability is a credit to her.
We wish her all the best for the forthcoming
HPH Employee of the Year awards in January.

Crathorne Hall Hotel & “The Hub”

Employee of the Year 2017

One of the nicest and most rewarding days in our
calendar is the Employee of the Year lunch. As our
Central Reservations Office is in the grounds of
Crathorne Hall Hotel, this event is very much a
joint occasion.

So on Monday 18th December, the table was set in
the Drawing Room, candelabras were lit and the
log fire was roaring to warm us on a very cold and
frosty winter day.

A Bucks Fizz awaited those who had won
Crathorne’s Employee of the Month and CRO’s
Employee of the Quarter during 2016/17 and
every one would have been a worthy EOY winner.
Following a mouth-watering 3 course lunch;
(thank you to Alan and the kitchen brigade!);
Peter, Crathorne’s GM and Richard, CRO’s GM
announced our winners for this year.

Huge congratulations go to Martin Crowe, Night
Manager at Crathorne Hall, and Rebecca Walker,
Trainee Team Leader at The Hub, who will
represent us at the Employee of the Year event in
January, we know you will have a fantastic stay at
Buxted and wish you both the very best of luck.

Crathorne Hall Hotel & “The Hub”

Vision and Values Launch

As with all Hand Picked Hotels, on Monday 4th December, at 10.30am the newly refreshed Vision
and Values were launched to the teams at Crathorne Hall and The Hub. The team enjoyed videos,
fun activities and competitions and also created our ‘Trees of Commitment’ before receiving
some delicious local fudge and a Hand Picked water bottle to take away, and a delicious themed
lunch to round off the morning!

Ettington Park Hotel

Revenue Team says ‘I DO’ for Wedding Focus Week…..

It was a Hand Picked Wedding Focus week in December! When all we think about is weddings!
To get into the spirit Ettington Park’s Revenue Team dressed up as Brides for the day by wearing
veils, some of us even made our own veils out of chair sashes! There were lots of laughs, giggles
and many confused glances from colleagues in other departments! However, it worked a treat as
we achieved 3rd place with the number of calls we made at 146 and came 1st by converting the
highest revenue to Definite with £37,562!

In other news, our Revenue Office has been remodelled! We are thrilled with the shiny new
office and we can’t believe the difference! We are struggling to hear each other because of the
acoustics but at least we have lots of space now especially for the kitchenette and the Christmas
tree! Merry Christmas!

Ettington Park Hotel

We declared the new ‘Staff Lounge’ Open

On Monday 4th December, we officially opened and unveiled our fabulous new Staff Lounge to
the team. After waiting very patiently for weeks whilst the building work took place, the team
are now thrilled to have this new lounge to relax in during their well earned down-time.

Loyal Service Awards

Iain Yule has achieved 13 years’ service with Ettington Park Hotel this year. Congratulations Iain.

Be Our Guest

Team members are now focusing on completing the
‘Be Our Guest’ Activity. This seems to be one of the
most favoured activities from the Rise and Shine
modules!

Employee of the Month/Year Lunch 2017

On Tuesday 5th December Gordon Burniston and Jenny
Rimell hosted this year’s Employee of the Month & Year
Lunch. Oh what fun we had! A delicious 3 course meal
was served, followed by a hilarious game of Articulate
(The ladies smashed it).

Ettington Park Hotel

Vision & Values Launch

We had a fun and engaging week at the beginning of December to launch the Hand Picked Vision
and Values.
Heres a snap-shot of what we have been up to:
Childrens Christmas Fayre – Local Engagement, Welcoming

The Childrens Christmas Fayre was a huge success. We raised over £100 for the local school, and
we have been asked by our lovely locals to make it an annual event.
In addition to this, we are already planning a ‘Teddy Bears Picnic’ themed family day to hold in
the summer.

Chefs Table – Family

Throughout the week Chef provided a new hot food offering at lunch time with a Chef Table
requesting feedback. The idea is to provide a more substantial and healthy lunch, and change
the current culture of ‘Silo’ eating to support more social team interaction.

Ettington Park Hotel

Virginia’s Charity Box – Local Engagement

All of our team members have nominated a local charity for
us at Ettington Park to support over the next 12 months.
The chosen charity will be launched at our annual Staff
Christmas Lunch in December.

Ettington Park’s Welcome Ambassador – Welcoming,
Individuality

Daimon Cornock, our renowned Front of House Porter gave us a short talk on his ‘Hints and Tips’
for giving the best welcome to all of our guests at Ettington. We just wished we had filmed the
event in order to show you all how its done!

Be my Buddy – Family, Welcoming

Elin Cooper and David Guest worked together to devise a “buddy” system which is aimed at
improving our welcome to new starters. We are looking forward to launching this in January
2018.

Work Hard – Rest Well

During November we refurbished all Staff Accommodation
Bedrooms. Bedrooms have been decorated, had new beds and
new bedroom furniture.

Ettington Park Hotel

Meet our A-Team

Meet our fantastic Kitchen Team. And what a great team we have!
Our Kitchen Family has grown over the last few months, and whilst it has been challenging for all
during the transitional period, the team is now running full steam ahead.
A measure of their recent success was reclaiming the two Rosettes after the AA inspection on the
6th November. Well done boys!
Not only did we reclaim our two rosettes, we had confirmation that our merit score has moved
to 90%.

During October we held a Pumpkin Carving
Competition for all of the staff.
We had great fun getting creative with some
very interesting results!
The pumpkins were displayed around the Hotel
over the Halloween period.

BE ME

Throughout October many of our Team Members
completed the ‘Be Me’ activity.
The feedback has been superb, with Team Members
now having greater appreciation and understanding
of the challenges that their colleagues have.

Fawsley Hall Hotel & Spa

SPOOKY GOINGS ON AT FAWSLEY
HALL HOTEL AND SPA…..

Halloween was celebrated this year at
Fawsley with a pumpkin carving
competition. Entries were submitted
by all departments and the winner
was the Health Cub – skilfully carved
by Alice!!!

Emily our fabulous Pastry Chef, having fun with chocolate for World Chocolate
Day.

Head Chef – Richard Walker was awarded Chef of the Year 2017/18 at the Royal and Derngate in
November.

Big Congratulations to Richard.

Our Cedar Restaurant was recognised for outstanding food and quality.

Fawsley Hall Hotel & Spa

Employee of the Month – Lunch

General Manager Mark Clayton and Deputy General
Manager Chris Porter hosted our annual Employee of the
Month Lunch at the Fox and Hounds pub on Thursday 7th
December. During the lunch Mark thanked all the winners
for their hard work and commitment that had been
recognized during the past 12 months and announced that
the winner of the Employee of the Year 2017 for Fawsley
Hall Hotel & Spa was Samantha Stacey. Sam works as Sales
& Events Coordinator and was awarded Employee of the
Year for all of her hard work that not only benefits her
department but also all colleagues and hotel guests.

With nominations from other departments, Sam’s hard
work and positive attitude has not gone unnoticed, she is
calm under pressure and always helpful and happy. Mark also went on to mention that as well as
the great support Sam gives the department she often goes above and beyond in taking on extra
responsibility including the time and effort she puts into the Staff Forum.

A well-deserved winner – Sam now goes on to represent Fawsley at the National Awards in
January.

Congratulations also go to Shannen Wond on reception and Emily Foster in the kitchen who were
runners up.

Helping Harry Trust is our nominated charity for
2017. Harry is a gorgeous little boy who suffers from
spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and has very
complex needs, and lives in our local community.

Strictly for Harry fundraiser event held at the hotel
in November was a star studded success. With
Robin Windsor from Strictly Come Dancing and Kate
Fisher British former international ball room
champion and World Cup Winner as judges, the
evening was a massive success.

Pictured is Julia Butt our Spa Manager with her
dance partner who wowed the crowds.

Fawsley Hall Hotel & Spa

Vision and Values Launch

The launch of the company’s Vision and Values week proved popular
with all staff – with a full week of activities planned all team members
had the opportunity to participate in activities these included:
• A visit to Warner Distillery (local Gin supplier to FHH) – Local

Engagement
• A team walk around the grounds taking in local points of interest
• Nomination of local charity for next year
• A staff quiz sheet on history of FFH –to be used for guests when

completed
• Shield making activity to run at launch parties – Shields then to be

displayed on wall in office corridor
• Nomination of “Welcoming Ambassador” to be voted for at Launch

parties and then produce a top tips sheet to be handed out at all staff
inductions
• ‘All about me’ form to be distributed to all staff in order reward staff with individual and
relevant prizes

Team Fawsley out for the first of
their Exploring Walks – Headed
up by Chris Potts – Health Club
Manager.

Staff voting for their charity
of the year 2018.

An opportunity to sign up for a trip to the
local Gin Distillery to find out more about
our local gin supplier was popular.

Meetings were held during the week at different
times of the day food and drink including local
produce was served to all staff.

Fawsley Hall Hotel & Spa

Decking the Halls…..

…..4 strong men… 3 wonderful maintenance men… 2 Sales Coordinators… and a partridge in a
pear tree!!!… Managed to decorate 10 Christmas Trees (ranging from 19ft to 6ft), over 10
garlands and thousands of lights, too many baubles to count, ribbons and shiny things in five
days.

Fawsley is ready for Christmas.

It’s in…. Getting there!!!! It’s …up….

No .. to the left… no to the
right!!

Grand Jersey Hotel & Spa

Congratulations to all our Long Service employees celebrating their service with Hand Picked at
our monthly Afternoon Tea. We
celebrated a total of 89 years
service for October, November &
December.

Highlands College Visit
We are continuing to work closely with local schools and colleges. In November Highlands college
catering students came to Grand Jersey for an open day, where they learned important tips on what
an employer is looking for in a potential employee, how to present themselves at an interview and of
course what operations are involved in running a hotel. They tried their hand at making mocktails and
each had a MOCK interview to practice their skills and gain confidence. A couple of students have
since joined us for casual shifts during our busy event season.
Personal Portfolio Launch
We are happy to have finally launched our Personal Portfolios. HR teamed
up with Channel Islands Training Manager Candice and prepared over 80
Personal Portfolios from scratch which we launched at the Vision and Values
week.
Vision And Values Launch Week – VV Fest
We are very impressed with our focus group’s fantastic idea to launch the new Vision & Values in
festival style, making it interesting and easy to understand for all their colleagues. Our Grand
Suite was turned into Grand’s own mini “Glastonbury” called the VV Fest. As with a proper
festival we had tickets, flyers, wristbands, the main stage for Julia’s message as well as Gazebos
representing each value.

We mapped both a guest and new employee’s experiences. By putting ourselves in their shoes it
helped us to understand their feelings and needs and extend the effort to make them feel
welcome and looked after.

Grand Jersey Hotel & Spa

Fun activities were held at each Gazebo. Family &
Individuality tent welcomed everyone with home
baked cookies Madeira style and tea & coffee.
Followed by fingerprinting our very own family tree
and individualising bunting which tied us all closer
together as HPH family.

The Welcoming tent had a
great game in place to get
to know our colleagues
better by playing “Guess
who” . Employees had a
chance to find out more
about each other in the fun
way putting their heads
together to win each
round.

Our Initiative team really went out
of their way and came up with an
activity involving building the Grand
hotel from scratch as well as finding
words to put together some really
positive sentences.

Local Engagment really portrayed what Jersey
has to offer and saw participants sitting on real
bales of hay during the quiz about local
produce used in our menus as well as
attractions and what Jersey is known for. They
all definitely left with some new knowledge
and fun facts to share with our guests and also
got to try Jersey’s own black butter.

CONGRATULATIONS to our Concierge Hugo who brought back the
National award - Concierge of the Year for the Boutique Hotelier. We are
so proud to have Hugo as part of Grand Jersey Family.

Hendon Hall Hotel

Vision & Values Week

Vision and Values was a busy week. There was learning, staff appreciation, good food, fun and
laughter! We had various activities – Presentation/Q&A by Springboard for HODs, Hendon Hall
history quiz, welcome teas/coffees and pastries on arrival to work, short burst training, guessing
the HOD smile game, World Buffet lunch.

We also created word clouds for each of our values, and what the values mean to us

Hendon Hall Hotel

We have also given the team the opportunity for some last minute
alterations before they go on stage

National Christmas Jumper Day

On National Christmas Jumper Day, the team put on their
Christmas jumpers to raise money for “Save The Children”

Employee of the month

We also held our last employee of the month lunch with Jose beating off some stiff completion
for October and Christina winning for the second time this year.

Employee of the year

What a difficult choice!!! Updated soon
• Christina Gentle
• Gemma Drakes
• Adrienn Torok
• Ergun Unlu

L’Horizon Beach Hotel & Spa

French Trip (St Pierre Park and L’ Horizon) to our
dedicated University de Savignac – 20-22 November 2017

Rise & Shine sessions are being held every
week

We have reached our target and trained 60%
of our staff in different departments. This
challenge is being held every week – with
sessions run by our Service Champions.

The children from Mont Nicolle School have
decorated gingerbread houses at L’ Horizon. All the
houses looked great and the children had such a
good time!

It was International Christmas Jumper day on 14 The children from Mont Nicolle primary school
December so we decided to get involved and get came in on 12 December to decorate gingerbread
in the festive spirit. We all donated £2 to Save the houses together with our Head Chef Andrew. All
Children and have raised a total of £75. the houses looked great and the children had
such a good time! Thank you to our Andrew for
making them all. We were in Jersey paper and on
ITV news that day!

New Hall Hotel & Spa

New Vision and Values
Our big focus this quarter has been on the new HPH Vision and Values Launch.
The Training and Guiding Team planned a week of activities around the new values and vision
starting with Launch Day on Monday 4th December
New Hall Training and
Guiding Team

Team members enjoyed a
hot chocolate and cupcake
before moving into the
Pavilion to watch the Hand
Picked video.

New Hall Hotel & Spa

The launch was followed by a
Mapping activity based around our
new values.

Each table had a different value and
the team had to ‘speed date’
spending a few minutes around
each table before moving around to
the next once the buzzer sounded.

Word clouds were then created using the results of
the mapping activity which will be displayed in the
staff dining room as an ongoing reminder of what
the values mean to us at New Hall.

The day was well attended by over 50 team members. Everyone
received a Values Gift containing water bottles, puzzles, sweets
and treats to take away.

A Week of Activities

Throughout the week we held games, competitions and ran short
burst sessions which were all based around the new values. One
of the most popular activities was Bingo where our team
members had to complete their cards by matching other
members of the team with the facts on the card and completing a
full house. It certainly was a fun way to find interesting things out about our New Hall family!!

On Wednesday 6th December New Hall GM
Jonathan Squire welcomed each team
member at the clock in machine with hot
drinks and snacks.

On Thursday 7th December we held an Open House and
invited everyone to bring their family and friends to work.
The visitors were served mulled wine, pastries and hot
chocolate. The team provided entertainment in the form
of an ‘Elf Trail’; we hid elves around the building for our
guests to find.

New Hall Hotel & Spa

Joe our Maintenance Supervisor built
a buzzer game which very much
entertained the kids but we think the
adults were far happier when it
stopped!

One of our lovely guests said it reminded her of
the dentist but the chocolate brownies made by
our Kitchen team helped to make up for the
noise!!!

Tony, our front office porter conducted ‘Tony’s Tours’ and gave our visitors fabulous and
fascinating history walks round of the building and grounds.

We think everyone enjoyed it!! 

We are looking forward to lots more activities planned throughout the year at New Hall which
will help reinforce our new values.

Norton House Hotel & Spa

Vision & Values Week – Community Event

“Vision & Values” community event was at Ravelrig Riding for the Disabled in Balerno. This
centre provides people with a disability the opportunity to ride and enjoy all the activities
connected with horse riding. The centre was founded in 1986 and has grown from having 12
riders and one pony to the present day with 95 regular riders and a total of 8 horses and ponies.
Our activity was on Tuesday 5th December 2017. We helped with the general tidying of the area
around the centre, including preparing trees, shrubs and flowers for the winter season. We’ve
had lots of team members get involved with and also presented the centre with cakes for their
riders over the Christmas period as well as lots of apples for their wonderful horses!

Norton House Hotel & Spa

Christmas Lunch and Santa’s Grotto!
We recently held our employee Christmas Lunch / Christmas Jumper Day where we served
Christmas lunch to all our team! The next day refreshments were served from Santa’s Grotto by
Peter Dornom (GM) and Chris Monks (DGM) assisted by HOD’s Scott Watson and Iona Oliver.

Recruitment Open Day!

We had a Recruitment Open Day at the hotel on Thursday 23rd November 2017. We had a
number of vacancies open and the purpose of the open day was to hold short interviews with
applicants who have shown an interest in working in the hotel industry and to highlight the
different departments we have. It is a great opportunity to showcase the hotel and attract
candidates with a positive attitude and a passion for hospitality. We promoted this with local
schools and universities. We will plan one of these each quarter to help with recruitment.

Nutfield Priory Hotel & Spa

Vision & Values Launch sessions

From Monday 4th to Friday 8th December we held five team
sessions to launch the NEW Hand Picked Vision & Values.
During the week three teams pitched their chosen local charities
and all of our team members were given the opportunity to vote
for which charity they think we should support at Nutfield Priory
Hotel & Spa next year. The winning charity was “George & the
Giant Pledge”. For further details about this fantastic charity –
please follow the link below:
https://www.facebook.com/claire.milsom.3/videos/10215316434328129/

We also launch our Initiative competition and all of our team
have been invited to submit an idea to improve sales or service.
The winning idea will be announced in the next newsletter and our
winner will enjoy a Complimentary Dinner, Bed and Breakfast stay
for 2 with wine 

Nutfield Priory Hotel & Spa

Nutfield Priory’s new team restaurant!

We are looking forward to opening our new team restaurant this week! Over the last
month the old Revenue Office in the basement has been transformed into a brand new
canteen and will now seat many more team members.
Well done and thank you to everyone who has been involved in this important and
exciting project particularly the maintenance team.
We hope everyone at Nutfield really likes the new room and team library 

Nutfield Priory Hotel & Spa

The Nutfield Staff Consultative Committee hosts a Team movie night!

Our SCC group arranged a Team movie night in the Health Club in
December. The team who attended enjoyed Pizza, Hot Chocolate and a
Christmas film. Thank you to Georgie Keast and the SCC group for
arranging this!

Employee of the Month Winners Lunch

On the 6th December we held a special lunch for all of our
Employee of the Month nominees from October and November at which we announced each
month’s winners.
Well done to Mary Bardon for being Employee of the Month for October 2017 and Gabriele
Zuccarello who was voted Employee of the Month for November 2017.

Charity Fund raising

The Hotel received two Thank you’s for their recent donations as follows;
Donation of Raffle Prize to Support Nutfield Church
Primary School – letter received:
You may recall that you kindly donated a raffle prize
to our fund raising quiz in October of this
year. The Governors of Nutfield Church Primary
School would like to thank you for your
donation. The evening raised £1217 towards the
maintenance and upkeep of the school.
Your generosity and continued support is very much
appreciated.

Rhinefield House Hotel

Vision and Values

We’ve had a fantastic week launching the new Vision & Values. We went with a Haribo
challenge, splitting into 5 teams. We had a wonderful mix of activities, to include all staff, from
Mapping the Guest & Team Member Experience to treasure hunts & quizzes, tower challenges,
local suppliers coming in for talks and taster sessions along with team members coming up with
new ideas and suggestions and short burst training over dinner! What a brilliant few days, now
time to ‘roll it out’!

First Prize went to the ‘Love Hearts’ followed closely by the ‘Fried Eggs’

Rhinefield House Hotel

We had a great turn out for
Mapping the Team Member
Experience, it was really
positive to get the group
thinking about their start at
Rhinefield. A real Family feel
with lots of great discussion
and new ideas.

Another brilliant session on
Welcoming the Guests at
Rhinefield.
It really got us thinking about what
we can do locally and how
wonderful Rhinefield and the New
Forest is.

Congratulations to team ‘Love hearts’ the
Rhinefield Winners. They had a great
team presence at every session, super
keen and very competitive!!

Well done team, ‘Fried Eggs’
2nd is brilliant - what a close
race!

Rhinefield House Hotel

And now onto other things at Rhinefield…
We’ve had a busy time with a local University and
College, two in the same week!
Bournemouth University Careers Fair.
Thank you to Nicki, HR Manager and
Alexa, F&B Supervisor who went along
to Bournemouth Uni.

Brockenhurst College held an Employability
event.
Thanks to Norbert, F&B Supervisor who went
along with Nicki, HR Manager to meet the local
students and tell them all about opportunities at
Rhinefield.

Housekeeping Week – Afternoon Tea
In September it was International
Housekeeping week and we wanted to
thank our brilliant housekeeping team with
a lovely afternoon tea.

Pigs
Lastly we had some very special guests in the New Forest and at Rhinefield which was a lovely
treat to see every day and they made us feel very Sunny!

Rookery Hall Hotel & Spa

The Rookery Hall Family

Family Board

We have introduced a ‘Family Board’ in our
canteen and every team member is completing
a slip containing their name, department & an
interesting fact about them as well as a photo of
their choice.

Our family is growing and we are all finding it
very interesting reading about each other.

Charity launch

We have teamed up with a local charity St Luke’s Hospice which supports the
terminally ill. The TMF and our great family here at Rookery Hall are planning lots
of events to raise funds for 2018. A great way to have fun and work together for a
fantastic cause. We are looking forward to showcasing them in future
newsletters.

Celebrating Success

We have introduced a ‘Celebration of Success’
board in the Team Room to show our team how
appreciated they are. In 2018 we will be issuing a
£5 voucher to be spent in the Hotel to every team
member who is mentioned by name. I think we
will be issuing a lot as our team are getting great
feedback.

Coming soon - Refurbishment of Team Room
Watch this space – we will be refurbishing our team room in 2018 with the support of the TMF.

Welcoming our New Arrivals

It is a great pleasure to welcome Emily Marie
Boardman who arrived on 8th October & Joshua
James Paul Edmonds who arrived on 5th December.

We wish our new mums Lisa Boardman and Leanne
Edmonds all the very best.

Rookery Hall Hotel & Spa

Vision and Values Launch
Week

Santa Claus arrived on his St
Luke’s bus to support our
launch week and gave our
teams a gift of a Hand Picked
water bottle.

During our launch of the Hand Picked Vision and Values our HOD team presented to the rest of
the Family to show how they will be carrying out ‘Mapping the Guest Experience’ concentrating
on ‘The Golden Hour’.

Dragon’s Den

Our fabulous teams were tasked to come up with an idea that would improve the Guest
Experience, increase sales and profit, reduce energy cost or wastage and the winning team
would receive £500 to implement the idea.

A dragon was drafted in from Head Office and Douglas Waddell took his seat alongside Rookery’s
GM, DGM and HR Manager.

The Dragons were wowed by the presentations and were really proud of how the teams had
thought out what they were presenting, the way they presented and made it really hard to
choose a winner.

The presentations were:-

Conference & Banqueting – To purchase chair covers and launder in house.

Front Office, Maintenance & Housekeeping – To purchase a luggage trolley.

Sales, Revenue & Accounts – To purchase white drapes for weddings.

Restaurant, Bar & Kitchen – To plant a herb garden.

Spa – To create a Rookery scent and give to the guest to take away with them in the form of a
candle.

The Winner was Front Office, Maintenance & Housekeeping presented by:-

Dan Pawson, Darek Parsa & Anthony Bialozorski.

As the Dragons were so impressed with everyone it has been agreed to implement all ideas
throughout 2018.

Rookery Hall Hotel & Spa

Afternoon Tea at Richmond Village Residential Home
The GM and some of the Rookery Family took
Afternoon Tea to Richmond Village Retirement
Home in Nantwich. As you can see our GM
enjoyed entertaining the ladies.

Celebrating our Hotel Success

Winner - Rookery Hall
We are extremely proud to have won the
Business Tourism Award at the Marketing Annual
Cheshire Tourism Awards on 23rd November
2017.
This is the start of many more to come.
Our five bubble spa was in the finals for Best Spa Day – well done team.
It’s great to see your efforts recognised nationally.

It was an honour for Rookery Hall to host Christmas for Ellie. Eleven year old Ellie Grace Morris is
to have a life-saving operation at Great Ormond Street Hospital so her mum decided to bring

Christmas forwards.
Ellie wore out the Grinch as this photo shows.

To see more about Ellie click on the hyperlink below
http://www.crewechronicle.co.uk/news/crewe-south-cheshire-news/poorly-elle-morris-
undergo-life-13944092

Stanbrook Abbey Hotel

Throughout the year we have been launching what it means to be part of the Hand Picked Hotels
Collection, for the guest experience as well as an employment experience. We launched
Company Induction over the summer and Rachel helped us to launch Being Hand Picked this
autumn.
Once all employees had attended both sessions, we then started to introduce “Rise & Shine” – in
the form of Mapping the Guest Experience.
We felt that now the team understand the company, and the “Hand Picked” behaviours; the next
step would be to put themselves “in the guest’s shoes” and to see how the brand standards
linked into the guest experience.

The launch of the new vision and values fitted in perfectly with our team as the values & Julia’s
vision were only launched a few months ago during company inductions. The vision and values
were still fresh in everyone’s mind. We sent out our invites and we had most departments attend
on launch day.

Stanbrook Abbey Hotel

We planned to have an interactive space for the team to take their own time to view, try and
understand the new values, following the DVD & presentation from Gareth.

Launch day; including
mocktails and popcorn,
interactive stations for
each value & a cinema
style experience for the

DVD viewing and
presentation.

We arranged follow up activities in the canteen, including a craft station to create a scrap book of
local points of interest & things to do.
We are all looking forward to 2018, excited to complete our first year of being a Hand Picked
Hotel and starting out our new journey into the first Hand Picked financial year.

Wishing you all a prosperous 2018 