Dalai Lama fills Sydney

Last month it was Britney Spears and Pearl Jam that filled Sydney hotels, but they weren't as big a drawcard as the Dalai Lama.

I noticed a week or two back that Sydney was filling quickly this week and did some research to find out why. It was then that I found out the Dalai Lama was going to be in Sydney from the 1st to the 4th. Combine this with the end of corporate travel season and I knew it would be a busy week for the hotels.

With this in mind, I loaded up on rooms for this week and thought I had judged the demand fairly well but when I completely ran out of rooms on Monday afternoon I knew it was trouble. Sydney was close to filling on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. From Tuesday onwards, each morning I managed to find only a handful of "affordable" rooms. If you hadn't got in early and needed last minute accommodation, you had to pay over $500 for a hotel.

Its getting busy again on Wednesday and Thursday next week in Sydney but I'm sure it won't be anywhere near as crazy for the hotels as it was this week when the Dalai Lama came to town.

Grace Hotel Sydney - technical difficulties

Here I was earlier in the month complaining about the technical difficulties that Telstra inflicted upon us. Well, that has been put in perspective now by one of the hotels in Sydney.

Last week I was trying to contact the Grace Hotel in Sydney to check availability. I tried their 1800 number, I tried their land line, I tried getting on their website ... nothing. I then rang the mobile number of the sales manager from the hotel ... it was the middle of the day but it sounded like I woke him up. I found out shortly after that he was travelling in Europe on business and it was about 3am in the morning, woops. I asked him if the hotel was still open and he hadn't heard anything about the technical difficulties yet.

I received this e-mail from them yesterday ... a whole week without telephone, e-mail or internet, OUCH!

Grace Hotel Sydney Telephone and Internet Service Outage

Please do not respond to this email.

Dear Business Partner,

You may have heard on the news recently, a set of fibre-optic and copper cables used for telecommunication have been severed, affecting parts of the Sydney CBD.

The Grace has been without telephone, email and internet service since Wednesday 16^th September. The hotel website and general phone line have been restored and some email addresses are operational.

The general hotel line has recently been diverted and is temporarily available. Please call +61 2 `9272 6888 for any urgent enquiries.

Thank you for your patience and understanding while we wait for telecommunication services to be restored. At this stage we have no definite information on when communications will be restored but as soon as this happens we will advise accordingly.

Kind regards
The Grace Hotel