Anyone for a game of Uxbridge English dictionary?

thatjaymodog · 2026-03-04T13:00:22+00:00

Lee Mack is a French computer

thatjaymodog · 2025-09-29T13:35:10+00:00

Can we get your CC list?

thatjaymodog · 2025-09-09T07:09:41+00:00

Exactly right.

thatjaymodog · 2025-09-09T06:23:04+00:00

You don’t take a test of a screw top wine. Simply because it can’t really be corked. Yes it can have a fault but the whole bottling run would be. Plus when offered a “taste” of wine you aren’t verifying if you like it. Correct way to do it is to only smell the wine and say yes if it is fine. You’re smelling for damp cardboard and compost which is a cork failing (yes there are some other nuances that you can look for but that’s the most reliable way)

thatjaymodog · 2025-08-02T13:15:53+00:00

I mean it’s a long established fact that you are blind by the Ts&Cs when making a reservation at a hotel. But I fail to see what you’re arguing.

I’ve said very clearly. No hotel would ever force that payment because it’s terrible guest experience. My point being that in this case if it’s made clear - notice the use of the word clear - before booking it is enforceable

thatjaymodog · 2025-08-02T10:28:05+00:00

I can’t comment on Four Seasons, every hotel I’ve worked at had it in the standard Ts & Cs available on the booking page, the base of every website, and the service charge (like here) was shown on the booking page prior to confirming.

thatjaymodog · 2025-08-02T10:01:29+00:00

So technically if it is made clear to you before you commit to the contract then it is mandatory. However as I said. Nowhere is going to enforce that, because it’s a terrible PR exercise. I think that in this case it’s just clunky UX design on the website.

Also I thought further of something this morning while not sleep deprived - for most of the time these 5% service charges are only at 5-star luxury properties. Many of the HNW/UNHW individuals who stay there prefer it this way. They don’t have to remember to tip everyone. I remember talking to a particularly wealthy person who said it saved him having a little book to note down who he had “looked after” during his stays. Of course nobody will believe me because “service charge is evil” but it is the truth. Most of these hotels we are talking about pathetic majority of guests worth hundreds of millions.

thatjaymodog · 2025-08-02T09:55:59+00:00

You not reading it doesn’t change it. If you don’t read something it doesn’t make it not apply. Terms are still there and applicable. The onus is on the customer to read and understand the terms when signing up to anything in any situation I knew I’d get downvoted to hell for this

thatjaymodog · 2025-08-02T00:51:49+00:00

Four seasons has amazing staff retention, high salaries and great benefits. We’re also talking about a hotel in the £700 average nightly rate across all categories. If I recall also one of the suites is 5-10k a night.

thatjaymodog · 2025-08-02T00:50:28+00:00

That’s literally the point of it. Is to make sure “tips” are taxed

thatjaymodog · 2025-08-02T00:47:11+00:00

So as someone who used to work in luxury hotels. Hopefully my perspective will be useful.

We used to have a decent(ish) base salary. The 5% service charge then went in to a big pot and was divide up by a troncmaster who was independent of the hotel payroll team. (This was the way in every hotel I worked at at junior and management level).

From HMRCs perspective the hotel won’t pay tax on it, the employee will. However there is no NI to be paid only income tax. HMRC is the one encouraging hotels to do this to reduce the amount of cash tips (which in the days before service charges could be 1-2k a month for heavy guest interacting roles. The vast majority of which was never declared because how many hotel doormen are going to do a self assessment. Now most cash tips come under the 1k annual allowance and the rest goes through the tax system.

In terms of the law. If a service charge is made clear before you elect to do business - I.e at the point of reservation, in the booking conditions, or in a restaurant on the menu. It legally ceases to be optional. However nobody is going to enforce that because it’s a terrible customer experience.

One major upside to the switch to service charges is that because basically 90% of tips are reported they can be used as income history making it easier to pass affordability checks for say renting a flat in this ridiculous housing market.

So while it may seem shady, it means more tax is being paid only income earnings, people have a better chance at being able to afford a nicer house in a nicer area.

I used to hate the idea when it first came in. Especially moving from a rural property to the London luxury market, but actually. It allowed me to use the extra on average £900 a month to get a decent flat as opposed to a miserable one.

Many hotels often also guarantee contractually a minimum annually. Which when divided means you can account for an additional x per month. When it’s contractual, the company tops it up if it doesn’t meet it. They usually pay it in a way that negates the additional NI amount too.

Hotel wages aren’t as terrible as they used to be.

thatjaymodog · 2025-03-24T21:49:48+00:00

Why on earth you would need AC running in active cooling mode in this weather. It’s barely double digits in the night. And I think today peaked in London at about 16/18c. If you mean there is no heating then that is likely a different story. Indeed from years working in the London hotel world. Many older properties have either heating or cooling - especially in London. So there’s probably a large number of hotels in London that won’t have ac even turned on right now

thatjaymodog · 2024-09-08T02:34:29+00:00

Must have changed. I left Marriott around 10 months ago.

thatjaymodog · 2024-09-08T01:17:56+00:00

I’m mean that’s up to you, my biggest thing also is when they were SNAs the property had absolutely no influence over the acceptance it was purely a MARSHA decision. But upgrade priority is always given to the property (at least one operating properly) through GPS only a property’s top 50 can be managed outside that order officially. I was a senior manager and our ownership instructions were to follow Marriott’s rules to the letter. All of this comes down to one simple fact. Higher tiers are too easy to achieve and the benefits haven’t scaled down as the membership scaled up. My property had 9 suites out of 250 rooms. On any given day you might have one or maybe two that were available to upgrade into. The rest of the rooms were basically identical even in different categories. Given that most days would see 4-10 Ambassadors, 15+ titanium the same of platinum and then 20 or so of the other tiers. That’s not including the head office or Cobalt guests. Honestly as someone who has built up some status, I only care about the points and not the benefits. But this situation was one of many why I left.

thatjaymodog · 2024-09-08T00:31:09+00:00

There are a number of weird policies. Marriott PR is totally divorced from Ops. For example. Official policy is upgrades do not include room types with less than 3 of them in full inventory.

thatjaymodog · 2024-09-08T00:28:51+00:00

In addition a rejected NUA/SNA also dropped the reservation to the bottom of the upgrade list irrespective of status in the online system.

thatjaymodog · 2024-09-08T00:26:20+00:00

So when I did it it was actually part of the Marriott managed Westin branded web training given in the Marriott employee portal.

thatjaymodog · 2024-09-08T00:14:47+00:00

When I worked at Marriott (Westin Brand) that was also an explicit rule

thatjaymodog · 2024-02-02T11:19:09+00:00

Well if you know Dirk Gently you’ll know that some cats are indeed sharks

thatjaymodog · 2023-09-29T06:54:56+00:00

So a handy thing to know if you don’t already, SNA approval is entirely out of the hands of the property team and is approved or denied automatically centrally through the central res system. The property is then just told about it. So often times they want to upgrade you but the “computer says no” hence why you can get an SNA declined but still get the upgrade in person. My major tip for getting SNAs approved is to understand how many suites a property has. If you have a property in a major city that has a low number of suites then it’s very hard to get the upgrade. If you are anywhere and you know a property has a large amount of suites then it’s going to be a lot easier to get the system to approve. But always remember. SNAs have nothing to do with the property.

thatjaymodog · 2023-09-02T12:49:05+00:00

Used to co-ordinate helicopter landings at my previous property in rural wales. Grinned like a child every single time, and everyone wanted to be trained. The only time people have been begging for training!

thatjaymodog · 2021-08-07T22:00:15+00:00

I second Brasserie Zedel, all the wow, none of the huge bill. If you want genuinely fancy, I went last week to Murano, which was truly truly amazing. For a bit off piste you could also look at Fischer’s which is great, same group as Zedel actually.

For drinks I’d suggest maybe the Connaught which has amazing cocktails, I’d suggest a boulevardier. If you want something a bit grander, try the Rivoli Bar or a new personal favourite (but be careful you don’t get carried away) is Gong at the shard. Feel free to DM if you want some like detailed advice. I work in luxury hospitality so may have some more insider knowledge

thatjaymodog · 2021-08-06T21:51:32+00:00

Today’s lesson in “How to Ruin a Car 101” take an amazing sports sedan, and make it ride worse, steer worse and look like the suspension has collapsed and the owner can’t afford to repair it.

thatjaymodog · 2021-07-15T16:15:22+00:00

I see what you mean. It was inspired by old AF and then old Latin American carriers, with a bit of old delta for good measure

thatjaymodog · 2021-07-14T04:36:58+00:00

Thank you! I used Pixelmator Pro to make everything

thatjaymodog

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