Hello Ladies, I thought I would get our blog started with my own personal post and tell you about a typical week as CEO of maiden-voyage.com.
As those of you who are already members of maiden-voyage.com will know, we have to maintain standards when it comes to recommending hotels that are super comfortable and safe for women travelling alone. As you can well imagine, that means spending a lot of time in hotels; with all the travelling I do, I can easily sleep in four different beds in one week! Quite often hotel managers will ask me or one of my Ambassadors to spend a night at their hotel to experience first-hand how female friendly they are.
It was on this basis that I got to experience the iconic Cadogan Hotel located on London’s famous Sloane Street, a quintessentially English establishment famed for its association with both Lillie Langtry and Oscar Wilde and still popular with A’listers today. Typically with this type of stay I am reviewing the hotel facilities with the female business traveller in mind, fluffy towels, robes, ipod docking stations, on-site leisure facilities, healthy food options, fabulous toiletries decent hairdryers and women’s magazines all win ‘Brownie points. Of course, it’s even more important for our hotels to be in safe, well-lit areas, to have adequate room and hotel security and to have a 24×7 manned reception.
I’m pleased to say the Cadogan passed with flying colours. I liked the warm, homely feel of the Cadogan so much that I went back there this week to hold one of my meetings over afternoon tea. With such beautiful and inspiring surroundings in which to meet new clients, I can’t think why anybody would ever opt to meet in those faceless, very 80’s meeting spaces.
Another great perk of my job is that I often get asked by PR’s, bloggers, magazines and hotels to review and write about luxury hotels around the world (it’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it!). These are usually country house, leisure or more often than not ‘romantic’ properties away from the major business hubs and Mr MV has the privilege of joining me.
We enjoyed a relaxing weekend being pampered within an inch of our lives in the breath-taking surroundings of Bolton Abbey at the Devonshire Arms Country House Hotel and Spa on behalf of Global Living Magazine. This countryside retreat, based in the Yorkshire Dales is the perfect anti-dote to week in the city, stunning countryside, cute little country villages, an Elemis spa and a Michelin star restaurant, The Burlington. You can read my full review in the December edition of Global Living Magazine.
The rest of this week will see me through meetings with the Grange Group of hotels in London who are working on their female friendly offering and then I’ll be inspecting another hotel in Brighton, oh I do like to be beside the seaside!. I have to say, there are worse things in life than hanging out in some of the world’s most beautiful hotels. If you’d like to do the same and are interested in becoming a maiden-voyage.com Ambassador, email us at Ambassadors@maiden-voyage.org stating which business city you would like to represent.
By Carolyn Pearson CEO, maiden-voyage.com
