A WOMAN'S WORK

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 140, 3 September 1927, Page 19

A WOMAN'S WORK

Lady Honywood, who is managing director of several English hotels, and is the wife of Sir John Courtenay Honywood. tells below how she came to take up this work. Having stayed in every type of hotel, in every sort of country. she knows by experience exactly what people like when staying in hotels. “It was one of my old governesses who really gave me the idea of taking up hotel work,” said Lady Honywood to a Press representative, as she sat at a business-like desk in her London office in Carter’s Hotel. Albemarle Street. "After she ceased to ‘governess us’ we used sometimes to stay at the small hotel she ran at Weybridge, or else go over to Ostend to her other little hotel there. Long before I took up that sort of work myself I thought how* extremely interesting it was. I also felt I simply had to do something, when other women took up careers, so I turned the matter over and over in my mind until it took firm root. The Unexpected Chance “Then quite suddenly and unexjDectedly the opportunity came. “I heard that Batt’s Hotel, in Dover Street. London, was for sale. It had not been at all successful. The war was on, and the air raids at that time kept peopje at home. After considering the question from all angles. I decided that I would try my ’prentice hand there. It was a nice, small West End hotel, not too large and not too expensive for an experiment. I bought it. It was my very first venture into business! To my surprise, it revived extraordinarily under my care,and in a short while became quite flourishing. Spurred on by success, I launched out again, rather timorously at first, as I’d had no training at all, and only my own experience at Batt’s. But there’s nothing like practice, and bolder and bolder I grew until I decided to add another hotel and then another to my list, until at last the time came to turn them into a limited company, of which I became managing director. “You see,” she said, "I had travelled practically all over the world —through North and South America and all over | Europe. I have stayed in some of the most wonderful hotels in the world, and

in some of the worst, and I really did know what people like and want!” Tall, fair, quiet, in manner and quiet in dress, Lady Honywood is always very calm and very collected. She has a soft voice that is never raised, and obviously has every detail of hotel directorship at her fingers’ ends. "My duties?” "For one thing, I choose all the furnishings—cretonnes are in all the hotels, London and in the country; they look bright and are clean. Then, of course, there are the china, glass, linen, and —very important—the carpets. “All sorts of renewals and repairs are put before me, and I am the decidingfactor as to what shall or shall not be done. “Just now I am more than usually busy, for the Balmer Lawn at Brockenhurst is being thoroughly reorganised. It is temporarily shut to visitors as knocking and hammering are so disturbing, and the army of workmen in possesion are fitting each bedroom with hot and cold water, and there are 17 new bathrooms Everything is being redecorated and refurnished from top to bottom. That means endless looking at patterns, going into costs, etc., for everything must be perfect, as the place is so popular. “Then there is interviewing—lots of it—the various staffs to see and listen to. “I pay periodical visits to each place in turn. Seldom a month passes without at least one visit from me. And I always turn up more or less unexpectedly. 1 can see, then, that things go in my absence exactly as they would if I was on the spot,” she said. Lady Hollywood’s ideas about hotels are very much to the point. “First of all,” she said, “flawless service, brightness, and, naturally, absolute cleanliness in every way, with polished politeness from everyone from the ‘boots’ up to the manager. Cheeriness Essential “I think a bright atmosphere very essential. That is why the chambermaids are all dressed in Indian red frocks, speckless white caps and aprons in all the hotels under my charge. Besides being so much more hygienic than the old black frocks, they are gay; it gives the visitor a feeling of cheeriness to be called in the mornings and have the curtains drawn by a maid looking bright. As psychologists have proved, I find that if people look bright they generally are bright. Besides,” she added, practically, “Indian red goes so well with the colour schemes. “In the same frame of mind I decided recently that all the waiters should wear red coats. These are cut on Eton lines, and I do know that these coats are spotlessly clean, as well as making the restaurants take on quite a festive air.”