apt blog

Golden opportunity for businesses to enjoy the Tour of Britain in Style - Matt Gotrel and Mel Nicholls Confirmed!

It really is exciting times in Cheltenham! Following the announcement of the Tour of Britain heading to the town, businesses are also being given a fantastic opportunity to enjoy the event in style, with an exclusive venue right in the heart of all the action. Combined with a delicious meal from a Michelin-Guide recommended chef, as well as two Olympian guest speakers, the event, which will run all day and culminate in a race-side, finish-line view, will see businesses come together for an once-in-a-lifetime experience.

As part of the hospitality offering in Imperial Gardens, attendees will be treated to a lively discussion between Gold-Medal Olympian and local lad Matt Gotrel OBE, and Paralympian Hand Cyclist Mel Nicholls. Chaired by Steve Knibbs of the BBC, guests will hear the two speak about their sporting experiences, before being given the chance to meet them over lunch. The three-course menu is being prepared by Michelin-Guide recommended chef Bob Parkinson of Made by Bob, after which guests will be transferred to an exclusive VIP viewing zone, right next to the finish line.

 

Tickets for the Corporate Hospitality in a 42ft yurt in Imperial Gardens are available at £350 +VAT, or tables of ten at £3,250 +VAT. Anyone interested in Corporate Hospitality should speak to our managing director Angie Petkovic on 01242 250 692 or by emailing [email protected]. Attendees will join town leaders and local businesses including Bloor Homes and Hunter Page Planning.

Apt team building experience: Greek on the Docks Dining Experience

Following on from our last blog, after the apt team successfully escaped from Trapped Escape Rooms, they headed to the new Greek on the Docks restaurant overlooking the harbour for lots of food and a cheeky bottle (or two) of wine!

Upon entering the restaurant which opened in Summer last year, we were all greeted by smiling faces and beautiful aromas. Our waiter, Nikos was absolutely exceptional and did not only keep the beautiful house wine flowing but also kept us giggling throughout the night.

As there was quite a large group of us, the staff at Greek on the Docks could not have been more attentive, considering we also had two Vegans in the party. For starters, the staff worked hard to prepare a Greek style Mezze tailored to all of our needs, all of which arrived beautifully presented on quality crockery with generous portions. The main meals were freshly prepared and just as delicious. So delicious, in fact that we have pulled together our very own suggested menu for you to try:

STARTERS

Kolokithakia: Battered courgette chips, served with Tzatziki.

Caramelised Onion Fava: Traditional yellow bean puree with caramelised onions and balsamic drizzle.

Dolmadakia: Vine leaves stuffed with rice.

MAINS

 Kleftiko: Slow cooked lamb in filo pastry with tomato and cheese.

Moussakas: Layers of aubergine, courgettes and beef mincemeat.

Gemista: Peppers and tomatoes stuffed with rice and vegetables.

DESSERTS

 Baklava: Delicate sweet pastry with nuts and syrup.

Trio of desserts

We would really like to thank Greek on the Docks for having us and for a lovely evening complete with gorgeous food and wine. If you haven’t already, we definitely recommend you book a table, oh and don’t forget to try the Kleftiko, it’s very tasty! Greek on the Docks have also recently launched a delicious lunch menu with one course starting from just £6.90 so be sure to try that out too!

Approved Memberwise Supplier 2017

Here at apt, we are really proud to be an approved Memberwise Supplier and we have been for three years!

The Memberwise Network helps businesses like us who offer specific services to membership organisations access peer-driven help and support to enable us to better increase our value and growth to our clients.

Memberwise also host a nationwide membership best practice conference and this year, our Account Director, Victoria Petkovic-Short will be speaking at the conference alongside our client, the British Association of Beauty Therapy and Cosmetology, or BABTAC.

This year, the conference which is being held in April at the Park Plaza London Victoria Hotel, will include topics such as new member acquisition, existing member retention, optimising member engagement, enhancing member engagement and much more.

If you are looking for membership marketing help this year, we can provide tailored PR and marketing support. Call 01242 250692 to meet over coffee and discuss your requirements today.

Travelodge reveals the ‘weirdest things’ left in their rooms during 2016

Budget hotel chain, Travelodge recently revealed a list of bizarre items that have been left behind in their rooms throughout 2016. A gold portrait of Elvis Presley, a barrister’s wig and keys to mansion in India were all reportedly left behind in its 525 hotels across the country.

One customer who was staying in the Harrogate Travelodge travelled 40 minutes down the motorway before realising that they’d left behind their Shih Tzu (named Harold), while a housekeeper in Dundee found a family of three generations gnomes in one bedroom.

The team at apt always look forward to the hotel chain revealing their weird items, check out the full list below:

• Coventry – Sikh ceremonial helmet and shield
• Cardiff – British Blue Shorthair cat named Yoda
• Canterbury – Antique stained glass window
• Bradford – Necklace made from £50 notes
• Huddersfield – Brass octagonal gramophone which had just been repaired to its full glory
• London Covent Garden – Barristers Forensic wig and gown
• Harrogate – Shih Tzu named Harold
• Heathrow Terminal 5 – Keys to a haveli [mansion] in Deli India
• Chester Central – A large vintage cuckoo clock
• Bicester – Swarovski encrusted waving cat [a good luck charm]
• London Aldgate East – Gold portrait of Elvis Presley
• Edinburgh Central – A forty year old teddy bear belonging to a CEO
• Oxford Abingdon Road – Mercedes AMG car
• London Bank – Annual set of company accounts
• Cambridge Central – Littmann stethoscope
• Newcastle – 3ft Cheetah ornament
• Birmingham Newhall Street – Suitcase of rupees
• Portsmouth – Monkey puzzle tree
• Leeds – Film footage from a documentary TV programme
• Dundee Strathmore – A family of three generations of garden gnomes
• London Docklands – Three piece Tom Ford suit
• Manchester Piccadilly – Three prosthetic legs [each leg wore a different designer shoe. This included a Valentino, Gucci and Mui Mui shoe]
• Liverpool Strand – A pair of 4ft pillars covered in fresh white roses
• Blackpool South Shore – 4ft stick of rock
• Bath – Wedding vows from the 1950s
• Manchester Central – Scrapbook of Coronation Street memorabilia
• Portishead – Suitcase of invoices that need to be posted out to customers  
• Southampton Central – Round the world cruise ticket

 

New Carluccio’s Restaurant launches in Cheltenham

Last night the apt team were invited to attend the launch of the new Carluccio’s branch located in Cheltenham. The event invited guests to experience the new premises and to sample the delicious food Carluccio’s has to offer.

The new venue, located in Cheltenham’s Regent Arcade was beautifully decorated to a modern Italian style and made the most of the space available with generous seating areas and clear pathways to move throughout the restaurant. The restaurant consisted of a mix of warm and inviting colours, modern and slightly quirky furniture and elegant lighting.

The food, which was constantly being served, consisted of an array of delicious anti-pasti for a true Italian taste and we really enjoyed the constant topping up of prosecco! The deli section was full of variety including flavoured pastas in a range of fantastic colours, a wonderful selection of breads and cheeses, delicious looking salads and the biggest meringues seen in Cheltenham.

The launch provided its guests with an authentic Italian atmosphere, from the hospitable waiters and waitresses to the Italian accordion singer and had a really good and well deserved turn-out to showcase the new venue. It was also a first for two members of our team, who were a little overwhelmed at first but proceeded to try all of the aperitifs that came their way! Nevertheless, the apt team really enjoyed their evening and are looking forward to visiting Carluccio’s for dinner sometime very soon!

Here are some snaps from the event (including a team selfie):

English Tourism Week 2015 – save the date!

Spring is fast approaching and English Tourism Week is on the horizon! VisitEngland will be celebrating tourism in England from 14^th – 22^nd March 2015; it will give people the chance to showcase the quality of visitor experiences and the value of what the hospitality industry brings to us as a nation. This year’s theme is ‘food and drink’ (great choice!), so why not get involved by promoting a fun activity:

• Get the whole family involved with a Great British Bake Off cake making extravaganza?
• How about a traditional British tea party with locally sourced produce?
• Why not hold a murder mystery dinner party at your house, local pub or an unusual location?

If you’re struggling for ideas, there are endless amounts of inspiration for all ages on the English Tourism Week website.

If you have already started planning, then make sure not to miss out on submitting your information to the VisitEngland website by 6^th March! They are encouraging businesses to provide information about their event in order to raise awareness for ETW15 through the website and social media. Ensure that all events are taking place during English Tourism Week as VisitEngland may pop it in their newsletter, so you may see a friendly face or two!

It’s going to be a very exciting week, so why not get involved? If you need any more information, feel free to check out the VisitEngland website for the full details and we look forward to celebrating English Tourism Week with you!

Considerate Hospitality Award

In the world of hospitality, big things are happening; Considerate Hoteliers has recently announced the exciting launch of this year’s “Considerate Hotel of the Year Awards” 2015, that’s taking place in London on July 3^rd! The ceremony has been put in place to give recognition to the hospitality businesses that provide outstanding environmental, sustainable, ethical and socially responsible attributes within the industry. In addition to these already amazing awards, two new categories have been added this year: recognition to those who provide sustainable spa provisions and slow food preparations.

Chairman of the Considerate Hoteliers, John Firrell, said “this year’s applications were anticipated greatly and the new award categories introduced will highlight areas within hotels that contribute substantially to having a positive environmental impact.”

The categories include:

• International Considerate Hotel of the Year
• UK Considerate Hotel of the Year
• Considerate Marketing & Guest Relations of the Year
• Considerate Hotelier of the Year 

• Considerate Supplier of the Year

• Small Considerate Hotel of the Year
• Considerate Housekeeping Team of the Year
• Considerate Slow Food Chef of the Year (Urban & Country)
• Considerate Spa & Wellness Award of the Year
• Considerate Good Egg Award (within the gift of Considerate Hoteliers)

So go on, submit your own hospitality business - it’s really easy! All you need to do is visit the Considerate Hoteliers website and simply fill out the application form provided. The entry is free to members of the Considerate Hotelier Group and non-members will be charged a £50 entry fee. Make sure to be quick though, as the deadline for all entries will be midnight on Friday 22^nd May 2015. Good luck to all of the entries and we’re looking forward to seeing who all the winners are!

South West Tourism Awards 2015

Last night was The South West Tourism Awards, presented on The Grand Pier in Weston-Super-Mare; over 98 prestigious awards were given to Hospitality and Tourism Businesses located within the South West Region.

As well as all the deserving winners, apt would especially like to congratulate Carol Wager on her success, after she was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Tourism Award. Carol has motivated many tourism businesses and inspires all she has worked with and trained; she has significant experience within tourism in the UK and overseas, before coming to the South West region over 25 years ago. She successfully ran South West Tourism Information Centres and was instrumental in setting up a training initiative called the Welcome Host Taxi which won the national award for Training in Tourism Award in 1999. Carol then turned her turned her skills to training tourism businesses in Disability Awareness and Customer Service. The passion Carol has for Disability Awareness training is evident through delivery of the inspirational Welcome All course and she has provided countless businesses with valuable information on welcoming visitors with disabilities.

Angie, Kelly and the team at apt would like to thank Carol for your positive contribution to the South West tourism industry and we wish you the best for your retirement this year. 

Travel the extra mile with your PR…

You’ll have heard us talk about the ‘so what’ factor before, which encourages you to question what is interesting about your story and why people might want to read it! You’ll also know we encourage you to ‘think outside the box’ when it comes to identifying an angle and look at what you could make a story out of!

Travelodge has done just that and every year, they publish a list of the mundane, quirky, unusual and sometimes downright odd items that grace their ‘lost-and-found’ boxes. This year £3,000 in £1 coins, a freshly-baked gingerbread village and even a husband made it onto the list, alongside more than 12,000 smartphones and tablets. Now this isn’t perhaps an ‘obvious’ story, one you would think of immediately when you think of corporate PR, yet it’s one of the more popular ones with consumer and trade publications alike! Our seemingly un-stoppable demand for an insight into the lives of others leaves us questioning just who would take a pink, electronic children’s Porsche into a hotel in the first place, and then even more bizarrely, leave it behind! The same premise applies to the ‘feng shui’ fishtank complete with nine fish and an inflated six-foot bouncy castle! Bonkers!

Anyway, we digress; here’s what you can learn from Travelodge with this #PRExample…

• Think outside the box; reiterating what we say time and time again, think outside the box. Lost and found has absolutely nothing to do with the service Travelodge provide, or the quality or calibre of their holiday portfolio, but it does provide interesting PR content that they can leverage. Significant amounts of coverage mean this simple story is worth its weight in gold (or maybe pound coins in this case), and it’s a simple case of identifying an appropriate angle. Go through your daily processes and see if there is something interesting, innovative or unusual that you can make the most of!

 

• It doesn’t have to be new; just because you did it last year, doesn’t mean you can’t do it again; in fact in some cases you can make it a tradition and a memorable ‘date for the diary’ as you release a sought-after story. Obviously, there is also the possibility of ‘too much of a good thing’ if you overdo it, but quarterly, bi-annually or annual releases can be great. In this case Travelodge release an annual list of lost-and-found, which gains coverage every year. Whatever your idea, it will have to be a regular occurrence and interesting enough to keep gaining the coverage.

 

Although many of these stories will ‘stand-alone’, a great way to take advantage of regular or annual releases is to link them to a topical event or national ‘day’. Sit down with a calendar and look at what you can do with key dates like Valentine’s for example; it doesn’t matter if you did something last year, as long as the content is suitably different and remains interesting, you’re bound to get coverage again. 

A suitcase full of £1… really?

When you own a hotel, it’s likely you’ll have a ‘lost property’ department that sees all manner of items large and small; from pyjamas to jewellery, to the odd teddy bear, books and bibles. In fact, our Managing Director Angie owned a mid-sized hotel for 16 years, and she says the most common items were jewellery and shoes with the oddest item being the three terrapins who continued to live with the family for another ten years!

Times that by 500 and it’s likely you’ll have thousands, if not tens of thousands of items left behind! Hotel Operator Travelodge is no exception and they’ve released an annual list detailing the odd, the odder and the oddest items left behind in rooms across the UK. A Chanel handbag worth £10,000 a prosthetic hand, keys to a BMW and even a husband do make you question the travelling population! A husband may be deliberate, but a hand? Surely you’d miss it before you left?! Apparently not!

Other items on the hit-list include:

• A one-way ticket to Los Angeles
• A suitcase full of 3000 £1 coins
• A gaming laptop worth £3,000
• A Children’s electronic, hot pink Porsche
• A three-foot rubber duck
• A ‘feng shui’ fish tank complete with nine fish
• A four-foot Antique doll’s house
• A still-inflated six-foot bouncy castle
• A freshly-baked gingerbread ‘village’

Other more everyday items included over 12,000 smartphones and tablets, teddies, pyjamas, books and toiletry bags!

What a haul! The only thing missing is the stories behind them and frankly we’d love to know just how heavy the suitcase of £1 was!