Posts Tagged ‘gold award’

The weather in Alhaurin el Grande has really heated up this June / July and we are enjoying life with clear blue skies, temperatures up to 40 degrees and our (unheated) pool feeling like a warm bath at 31 degrees!!

We had thought that the well publicised sinking pound, the world wide  recession and even the more recent Swine Flu would effect the holiday rental bookings for 2009 – both in our Spanish hot tub and pool villa holidays, El Roble Holidays, and even could drop the 93% occupancy we had enjoyed last year in our Award winning Chester holiday apartment, Chester Canalside Holidays.  

However, after a very slow start, generally, with the Spanish bookings -  we did had some May / June bookings that had been made a year ago! – this has now picked up and we are enjoying near normal booking levels.  Usually we have the main Summer season booked out by the end of January……………. this year the main Summer weeks were finally all booked out by the end of June – just a week ago!

El Corcho Villa now has only one week available until 2nd October quite an acheivement in this economic climate – surprisingly though the missing week is NEXT WEEK, a special July late holiday offer, so maybe at this stage we will have to accept it might not get booked out, ………………. We could lie by the pool, enjoy the refreshing jacuzzi and relax taking in the wonderful views…….in fact be guests for a week!

La Bellota is also empty next week -  is everybody working next week surely someone can take a weeks holiday - after that it is booked until the 29th August………although while I write this blog I have just taken a call to possibly book next week ! You never know…

The main change we have seen is the nationality of guests, we now get around half our bookings from Spanish nationals, this suppliments the drop in the British guests – which has been very noticable. Although we are now getting calls from the UK about holidays in Summer 2010….. are British people going back to Summer holidays abroad for 2010?

Our Chester 4* gold Wharton Lock Apartment,  meanwhile, benefitted from the publicity that to stay in the UK was best idea for a holiday. It has maintained its full calendar, resulting in us now passing almost all enquiries across to other owners in Chester. It is fully booked until October and hold some bookings after that as well!!

Sandra is enjoying a Raynauds free time and its hard to believe seeing her like this that Winters can cause her so much pain and problems. We have never regretted the move and enjoy the Spanish relaxed way of life, it gave us an opportunity for a career change and the chance to work together in the holiday rental business. Over the seven years the business has become well established with guests returning time after time and this has certainly helped in the current climate.

Sadly all too many UK people who moved to Spain as retirees have found the last 12 months very difficult and some are struggling to sell up and are trying to return to the UK. This is a very sad situation for them however, it is certainly not the situation for the majority of ex-pats in Spain who, like us, are perfectly happy with our move to “a better way of life” in Spain.

In the last week we are pleased to see there have been two blog posts about Chester Canalside Holidays on the Directory of Chester website.

The first blog on the Directory of Chester website credits us with our new Gold grading for our 4 star gold Wharton Lock Apartment - a great achievement to be chosen by Enjoy England as one of their very first Gold graded self catering holiday homes. In fact we are the only Gold award holiday home in Chester – something we are very proud of and it cant go unmentioned that we attribute part of our success to two Chester companies that work with us -  Poppies Cleaners, who keep the apartment immaculate, and Simon Tiplady, who provides us with website development and hosting for Chester Canalside Holidays.

The second blog by Directory of Chester is in support of self catering holidays and what city centre apartments can offer as a place to stay in Chester. Our luxury self catering apartment, 4 star GOLD Wharton Lock Apartment, is a fantastic alternative to a city centre hotel  and offers greater flexibility for family holidays in Chester or a romantic city break and this is backed up by our guests who enjoyed their stay in Cheshire.

Many thanks to Directory of Chester for both of the blogs!

However in all this we must mention the recent article  in the Evening Leader about our fantastic cleaning company Poppies, together with our award winning 4 star gold Wharton Lock Apartment.

We got back to Spain last night after 4 rather wet, but eventful, days staying in Chester.

On Thursday, we spent the day at Simon and Lisa’s new house just outside Chester – someone had asked if we were going to help them decorate …………however they are still at the knock down and clear out stage! Graham had fun smashing a very pink bathroom suite, our 6 year old niece says its very pretty but Simon and Lisa have understandably opted for a more traditional white one!

Friday brought a rainy morning and a trip to the tourist board offices of Visit Chester. As Wharton Lock Apartment is one of the 4 finalists in the Chester and Cheshire “Self Catering Holiday of the Year 2009″ we were to meet the judge  Kate Simon, Travel Editor of the Independent on Sunday.

Sadly we had not been able to show Kate around the apartment, as the guest who is staying there at the moment would not allow the apartment to be viewed during their stay – and in respect of our guests wishes we had made alternative arrangements with Lucy, from VisitChester, to meet Kate at their offices.

Hopefully showing our apartment “virtually”, with the help of our website, gave her a good idea of what we offer our guests…….and thankfully our new “Gold Award” certificate arrived in the post during our visit and so we were able to proudly show this to Kate during the presentation.

We then travelled to Tarporley, to celebrate Grahams mothers 83rd birthday with her.

Saturday and Sunday saw us back at the new house, Keith had by now joined us from Bristol and Christine, Lisa’s mum, was also there. In the afternoon Michelle, Lisa’s sister, Simon’s Uncle Richard, Auntie Anna and 6 year old Jennifer arrived too! Good job they bought a big house! There was dust, noise and many discussions on the plans…………..together with lots of cups of tea, bacon sandwiches and cakes!

Then back onto a flight to Spain and the peace and quiet…………..but it did remind us how we lived for the 13 months it took to build this house while we lived in a motor-home on the land!