Breaking news: Hotel Appoints New Member Of Staff

This column could easily be a rant, but I don’t want it to be and I hope it won’t be.

Every so often I’ll receive a release telling me that Hotel So & So has appointed a new MD or Head of Butlers, Spa Manager or Garden Design Consultant. It’s a big deal for them, sure, but not for almost anyone else. Can you imagine if I told the nearest person in the street? “Hotel where?” they’d ask? “Never heard of it. Why are you telling me this?”

The likes of Boutique Hotelier and Sleeper cover this kind of thing — at least, if the hotel is a known quantity or if it is changing approach with said appointment. So definitely tell them. But there’s really no need to send to a wider recipient list, including the mostly newspaper-focused likes of yours truly. They’re tremendously unlikely to cover it.

A potential exception to this rule concerns the appointment of new head chefs. If this freshly-arrived cook is very de rigueur and/or likely to really shake things up in their new post, then that could just make for a food-focused story. My rationale here is that a funky chef has the ability to impact guests’ stay far more directly than any MD or spa boss.

Equally noteworthy would be if the new appointment generally heralds a radical, industry-shaking change of direction for said hotel. This could be of interest simply in being so unusual.

Otherwise, though, I’d recommend curating a select, niche mailing list for this sort of humdrum news. Send national writers only your most potent stuff, which definitely doesn’t include new Garden Design Consultants. Why? Because you want to carve out a reputation for good stories. Think quality over quantity; notable new offerings over dull new MDs.