Alex Polizzi talks hotels

Alex Polizzi comes from a long line of hoteliers, her grandfather being Lord Forte, her mother, the hotel designer Olga Polizzi and her uncle Sir Rocco Forte. After reading English at Oxford, Alex trained at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong before working for Marco Pierre White and the family business at Rocco Forte Hotels in Cardiff, Rome and St Petersburg. She now manages the Hotel Endsleigh in Devon, which is owned by her mother, and presents The Hotel Inspector on Five. Her new book, Alex Polizzi's Little Black Book of Hotels provides a guide to 52 secret destinations in Great Britain. Here, the no-nonsense hotelier talks about the business, the nightmare guests and why running hotels is better than being a doctor.

My family… had very middle class aspirations for me. They would have loved me to be a lawyer or a doctor, but what I appreciated about hotel work is that you see people at happy times in their life, not like a doctor, who has to tell people that they have a terrible disease or lawyers who are dealing with divorces.

I trained at the Mandarin Oriental because… at the time, my grandfather had 800 hotels all over the globe, but not one in Hong Kong. I thought that people might give me a bit more of a chance and that it would be sensible, if I was going to test myself, to do it under circumstances where the scrutiny would be slightly less intense.

That was a good decision because… the training I received there has stood me in good stead for the rest of my life. I had a very tough food and beverage director whose name was Wolfgang Kruger. He taught me that it's not enough to ask somebody else to do something; you have to make sure that it's been done as well. He had an incredible eye for detail - it's amazing how a small thing can ruin the overall look.

I see the worst of people when… they drink too much. At that point, they don't give a complaint in a normal way - they tend to do it with flecks of spittle flying out of their mouths and ranting and raving on and on. The customer is usually right, but certainly not always. There are unreasonable, ill-mannered people in every walk of life and unfortunately hotel guests are no exception.

Becoming The Hotel Inspector on Five… came at a perfect time in my life, because I was expecting a baby and I don't think you can run a hotel unless you give yourself to it heart and soul. So it was a wonderful opportunity to re-arrange my life - I've seized it with both hands and loved every minute.

The mistake people make is… to underestimate what hard work it is running guest accommodation. I think that, when they've got no experience at all of the industry, this takes people by surprise enormously. I know The Hotel Inspector is only a TV show, but I do take my moral responsibility quite seriously and try and find a solution to whatever it is they need help with.

On my honeymoon… my husband and I went to stay at the Il Pellicano in Tuscany and that was lovely. It doesn't take children under 12; there's a Michelin starred restaurant as well as a proper Italian seaside restaurant; it has immaculate service and it's just very, very well run. We also love Alistair McAlpine's place in Puglia, but I think, now we've got children, what we need and want is so different. We've gone to the Four Seasons in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt twice, where they really do look after kids incredibly well.

If you can't spend £100 a night… you can get nylon sheets, cockroaches and filthy bathrooms, as I experienced driving around Europe. You get what you pay for to a certain extent, but I actually think there's very little excuse for having a disgustingly dirty room, which happens often.

I admire… my uncle. I think there are very few people who would have inherited a huge hotel empire like he did and lost it, but who had the enormous willpower to re-create something that is now a luxury hotel group. Nick Jones did a brilliant job with the Soho House Group - I do admire someone who seems to have come from nowhere and done much more than I have.

Running a hotel is… a job for people who are quite good at lots of things. It gives you an opportunity to put your finger in so many pies: you have to know a bit about marketing; be able to read a balance sheet; have people skills; be incredibly organised; think on your feet; and plan ahead. It's good for general all rounders.

My favourite website is… i-escape.com - I love that. Even if I haven't booked through it, it's the kind of place I go to trawl through ideas and different parts of the world that I might not have thought of visiting.

Alex Polizzi's Little Black Book of Hotels: 52 Secret Destinations in Great Britain (Quadrille Publishing) is reviewed here.

Emily Jenkinson

16 July 2010