Holidays

I've been on holiday for a couple of weeks. The second week of which was spent at Centerparcs. If there is an exemplar for excellent customer service and knowing their target market (families) and how to deal with them, it's Sherwood Forest Centerparcs.

I went as a sceptic, I come back as a convert. There are some niggles, particularly the somewhat stressful changing room arrangements for the pool, however in general it's a well oiled and well run machine well set up for families with a fantastic on-site team.

For us, this showed itself in two ways. First was the villa move when we awoke on Sunday morning to a sopping wet floor in my eldest son's bedroom. Secondly was the way the restaurants catered to our family with such ease. I guess the flood and the villa move showed their capabilities in their real light - they dealt with it professionally and quickly even on a Sunday morning and within 5 hours we'd moved to a new villa and the issue was behind us and they'd sorted every issue. Fantastic customer service.

Our sons enjoyed all their activities, there's a really sense of care and attention to detail that the staff have for the courses being run for children. And the afternoon that my wife and I had to ourselves was spent wonderfully in a coffee shop reading papers - bliss!!

Oh, and the two golf lessons have completely re-modelled my very amateur swing and I think I now have the basis on which to build a game, and it's shown me that lessons really are an important part of building up a decent game.

Back to work I guess!!