Richard Hunt interviews the manager of Blackpool's new Holiday Inn hotel

Transcript

00:00Hello, I'm with Mark Winter, the General Manager of the new Holiday Inn in Blackpool.

00:05It's due to open tomorrow, Wednesday, May 1st.

00:09It's all very exciting.

00:11We've been able to take a sneak look at the hotel before it opens.

00:15Mark, how are things going at the moment?

00:17Absolutely amazing.

00:19We're literally hours away from opening the doors to our first guests and our first diners.

00:25So yeah, there's a real buzz about the place.

00:28It is really exciting to invite a few people in to sample the restaurant,

00:32sample some check-in and meet some of the amazing team.

00:36Excellent.

00:37And in terms of some of the people that are coming to work here,

00:40I understand there will be a lot of applicants and most of them that have been taken over from Blackpool.

00:45Is that the case?

00:46Yeah, absolutely.

00:47So we had 3,679 applications for 70 jobs for the Holiday Inn and Marco's New York Italia.

00:5697% of the workforce are from the local area in terms of Blackpool,

01:01which I think is staggering statistics

01:04and just shows that an international branded hotel and a celebrity chef restaurant

01:09really can have a positive impact on the market.

01:12Absolutely. And talking of that celebrity restaurant,

01:15you've got the Marco P.O. White Italian restaurant.

01:18Absolutely.

01:19How are things going with that?

01:20Yeah, fantastic.

01:21So we've got the team here from Marco P.O. White.

01:24We've got chefs in the kitchen.

01:25We've got some front of house service trainers.

01:27The team have been on a journey for the last four weeks,

01:31cocktail making, sampling some of the amazing food, sampling some wines.

01:36So yeah, they're getting really, really prepared to welcome our first diners tomorrow.

01:41Excellent.

01:42I understand one of the first guests through the door is going to be a bit of a celebrity.

01:46Who have you got coming?

01:47We've got the fantastic Jack P. Sheppard from Coronation Street

01:51and we're absolutely buzzing to welcome Jack tomorrow morning.

01:55Excellent. What's Jack going to be doing?

01:57Jack is going to be cutting our ribbon and declaring us open.

02:00Fantastic. Thanks Mark. Thanks for your time.

02:02Thank you.

02:03Best of luck.