STB - WELCOME HOSTS

January 1999

While jobs are regularly being lost across the country, teenagers in the New Forest village of Sway have an award-winning local business to thank for creating ten new part-time jobs in the past six months. The popular Nurse’s Cottage guest-house, recently named RAC Small Hotel of the Year in Central Southern England, opened the doors of its Garden Room Restaurant to non-residents last Summer and is rapidly building up a regular clientelle.

“Too often these days,” says chef/proprietor Tony Barnfield, “we are expected to tolerate lacklustre, impersonal service. Being so small, there is no danger of that at The Nurse’s Cottage, and people really appreciate truly personal service.”

As well as a monthly incentive scheme for the youngsters, Tony arranged for Southern Tourist Board to hold a Welcome Host customer care course for them at the Cottage, which has been called “the most intimate conference centre imaginable”. It is probably also one of the smallest restaurants in the South, with only six tables, but with such dedicated management, small really is beautiful! As STB Training Manager Sue Gill commented: “Tony is totally committed to quality of service, making The Nurse’s Cottage a prime example of good customer care by professionally trained staff .”

And one more for the record books: the village newsagent’s 13-year-old daughter Hazel Kirk, who works at The Nurse’s Cottage each weekend, was the youngest person in the region (probably the whole country) to pass the Welcome Host course. On a recent visit to The Nurse’s Cottage, Southern Tourist Board Chairman Michael Green singled Hazel out for special congratulation.

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