Behind the Scenes with Norbert Stump, General Manager

With the complications and restrictions implemented as a result of the recent Covid-19 outbreak, seeing travel and tourism come to a complete standstill, the day-to-day operations of the Pomme d'Or Hotel have been challenged in a way not seen since the Second World War. But, in true Seymour fashion, our very dedicated and talented team has gone above and beyond to adapt our services in these trying times. 

Having spent the last year shaping the Pomme d'Or Hotel since taking the reins as General Manager in 2019, Norbert Stump has seen his hotel adjust in the last few months to help at the front line of the community, becoming a principal service to Jersey’s essential workers.

Here, Norbert takes us behind the scenes of life since lock down at the Pomme d'Or Hotel.

Since closing our doors at the end of March, we very quickly managed to change our procedures and set-up to accommodate essential workers for the Government of Jersey who had to isolate and distance themselves from their families and households. We had to adapt from one day to the next as the situation changed, sometimes by the hour. This has proved advantageous as we now have most of the Government requirements in place, ready for the day we can reopen to our regular guests.

Having the opportunity to look after the essential workers, nurses, doctors, soldiers and policemen made us all very proud and honoured. Most of our guests isolating with us have been local people who have never stayed with us before. These guests all worked long and hard every day and coming back to a hotel away from their families proved challenging for these essential workers. Our team did their best every day to cheer them up, a friendly smile at every guest encounter, help out wherever they could, deliver some delicious food to give our guests the comfort of a home away from home. We created a safe environment for our essential workers who were very thankful for all the support we gave them and they could continue with the work they had to do.

Naturally, we have introduced new operations and services to adapt to our longer stay guests, and our room service offering has proved very successful. It has never been so popular; as previously we've had such a great selection across our food and beverage outlets. Within days we realised our guests required a different service and room service became 90% of our daily operation. Not just delivering food but also considering the safety and increased hygiene requirements for staff and guests became a new challenge. Very quickly we redeployed our staff into this department, fine-tuned our procedures to be quick and efficient but safe for everybody at the same time. We managed to borrow additional equipment from our sister properties and created a slick room service operation running within 24 hours. 

We have since been able to reopen our Cafe Bar for a takeaway only service to provide a little more normality to our customers, although we have implemented a new system to make ordering quick, easy and most importantly, safe.

We’re really looking forward to welcoming our future guests to a safe environment to enjoy their stay with us, with increased cleaning and hygiene procedures in place. We will be looking to make changes to our buffet service with enhanced safety measures and our head chef is currently creating alternative menus so we can continue with our popular Friday fish night and Sunday lunch here at the 'Pomme' as soon as it is safe to do so.

Our staff has remained the same and we will continue welcoming our guests offering the same levels of courtesy, comfort and friendliness toward our customers, as we would to guests in our own home. The future will be very different for us all and we will adapt as quickly as possible to those changes as we have done over the past 3 months. The focus may have changed but you can still expect our strong tradition of hospitality, luxury and comfort in our bedrooms and reassuringly high standards of safety and hygiene, albeit at a safe distance! Myself and my team look forward to welcoming you back very soon.