I have spent a significant percentage of my life running training sessions in hotels. Most hotels have provided unobtrusive, learningfriendly environments that succeeded in meeting the demands of the occasion. There are some, however, that, stick in my mind as bizarre Fawlty Towers experiences that really mucked things up.

There was the hotel in the Midlands that had just been reopened after major refurbishment. Taped music emanated from every orifice – even from the bollards surrounding the car park. We set up the conference room, bobbing up and down to the music, and, as the time drew closer to start the opening session, we searched in vain for a switch to turn off the music. I went to reception to enlist their help and they explained that there was no provision to switch off the music in the conference room. I said that we could not possibly run our programme to the sound of Puff the Magic Dragon. In the end we had to start the conference with a man up a ladder opening various ceiling panels and disconnecting each speaker.

On another occasion, I arrived at a hotel in good time to check that everything was in order, including focusing the overhead projector. In my experience, hotels never do this (and yes, I know, OHPs are museum pieces now!). As soon as I switched on the machine, there was a blue flash followed by a cloud of acrid black smoke. This was quickly picked up by the smoke detectors and set off the fire alarms throughout the hotel. Everyone had to evacuate the building and, as we stood shivering at the assembly point, two large fire engines arrived. An hour or so passed before we were allowed back into the building and our carefully timed programme was in tatters.

In another hotel, in mid-flow, I once perched nonchalantly on the corner of the table at the front of the room and, without warning, one end collapsed and everything, including jugs of water, orange juice, a tray of glasses, various books and papers, slid down the sudden slope finishing up on top of me. It seems that the locking catch at that end of the table had not been engaged properly. Lying prostrate, surrounded by the contents of the table, it was difficult to keep up the nothing-canfaze-me image!

The other day I was the keynote speaker at a large conference of trainers. The conference was a two-day affair in the ballroom of a large hotel. There were 180 participants Peter Honey reminisces about Fawlty training venues and I had a two-hour slot on the opening day of the conference on learning and trainer styles.

The person organising the conference had visited me some weeks before the event and given me a thorough briefing. One of her requests was that, despite the large numbers, my session should be run in an involving, participative way; I was to avoid anything resembling ‘chalk and talk’. As the day grew closer, I sent an email to my contact checking, amongst other things, that the room would be set up in a cabaret style, i.e. with the participants sitting at round tables in groups of 12 or so. This was duly confirmed and I planned my session accordingly. I decided, after a swift scene-setting introduction of 15 minutes or so, to run the whole session by getting the round-table groups to discuss a series of questions. There were five of them:

• Suppose you wanted to convince someone that learning was a learnable skill, what would you say?
• How would you define effective learning?
• How would you maximise the likelihood of effective learning happening?
• Why bother with trainer or learning styles?
• What will you do to broaden your repertoire as a trainer?

My plan was that, after each round-table discussion, I’d invite groups to call out some ideas that I’d then summarise, add to and reinforce. I’ve run similar sessions loads of times without mishap.

When I got to the hotel, I was horrified to see that the room had been set out formally, with rows of chairs as far as the eye could see; not a round table in sight and with insufficient time to conjure any up. I stuck to my plan by getting the participants to rearrange the chairs into circles but it was far from ideal and, not for the first time, I cursed myself for not having a viable contingency plan. Oh, how I longed for the Powerpoints I had left at home!

So, as I’m sure you have discovered, the physical environment can be a make-or-break factor, and hotels are perfectly capable of wrecking an otherwise well-designed training session. I haven’t even mentioned hotels that took too long to serve lunch, failed to bring coffee/tea at the required time, failed to convert bedrooms into break-out rooms (I once dispatched a group to a room occupied by a honeymoon couple!), flooded without warning one afternoon, were absurdly hot/cold, had no electricity…and so on.

Dr Peter Honey, FRSA, FCIPD, FIMC is a chartered psychologist and founder of Peter Honey Publications. He can be contacted on +44 (0) 1628 633946, at peterhoney@peterhoney.com or visit
www.peterhoney.com.

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