Recently, I was on business trip in Leicester (UK) and I found an Indian restaurant whose Birmingham branch I had been too many years ago. Having been impressed with the Birmingham restaurant I figured that the one in Leicester would also be good and a quick look at their website and the menu it seemed like I had figured right. The restaurant was Shimla Pinks.
Indeed the restaurant, the food, and service was of very good quality so we were not disappointed. One of my team had placed his hotel key card on top of the table and one of the waiters noticed this and said “Ohhhh, you’re staying at the Hilton!”. We didn’t think anything of it and thought it was just the waiter making small talk and being friendly. However at the end of the meal another waiter brought our bill over to me and just as he was handing this over he too noticed this keycard on the table too and said “Ohhhh, you’re staying at the Hilton?”. At this point we started to wonder what the fascination was about the Hilton – it was a nice hotel but this attention seemed to be a little over the top. I answered that we were all staying there at which point he said “Well you get a discount off your bill if you’re staying at the Hilton” and off he went to adjust the bill.
Amazingly we were given a whopping 15% off the bill! Now since then I’ve checked both the Hilton’s website and Shimla Pink’s website and neither of them mention this discount which is a shame as they could help each other out if more people knew about it with this kind of business partnership and maybe they could have reciprocal arrangements. I’m going to write to the manager of both places to recommend they publicise this more for their customers benefit.
So the moral of the story is that you should always ask in hotels if they have any partnerships like this with restaraunts and you should also carry your hotel keycard with you and ask at the restaraunt if they have any discount offers. If you don’t ask you don’t get!
I would thoroughly recommend both places if you are ever visiting and staying in Leicester.
Filed under: Information Sharing, Restaraunts
