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SAY NIGHT NIGHT TO BABYSITTER BLUES... Fred Mawer on How New Parents Can Enjoy Peace of
Mind in Hotels
Byline: FRED MAWER
ABINGTON House seemed to be just the place to take my partner, Emily, for her 40th birthday.
Sure, the trendy media bolt-hole, in the depths of rural Somerset, is wildly expensive. But
a 40th birthday happens only once.
And, as well as promising to indulge adults with its luxurious spa, cool bar and fine
food, the hotel makes much play about being family-friendly. Since we wanted to take our
little boy, Arthur, along too, it sounded like the perfect combination.
When I phoned to book, I was told that we'd need a babysitter in our room in the evening
while we had dinner. I was a bit taken aback.
When we stayed in another family-oriented country-house hotel soon after Arthur was
born, we just hooked up our room to the hotel's baby-listening system (of which more later).
Naively, I thought this is what happened in all UK hotels pitching for family business
these days. Anyway, I asked Babington to order the babysitter.
For the most part, we had a great time at Babington. We swam in the swanky pool at the
spa. Arthur was well looked after in the nursery while we chilled out with the papers.
Our family room - in an outbuilding - was more a mini-apartment. There was a separate
bedroom, cot, changing mat, toys and, best of all, a mini-towelling robe for Arthur.
The square bath was amazing - big enough for the three of us to play in all together. The
weather was freezing, and the following morning we had a magical walk through the snow-covered
grounds and watched the ducks skidding on their bottoms, pantomime-fashion, as they
landed on the frozen lake.
But the evening before, things had gone somewhat awry. Just before the babysitter was due to
arrive, reception called to tell us that she couldn't make it - the roads were too lethal
to drive, apparently - and they couldn't find a replacement. There was nothing they could
do, said the receptionist, implying that a meal in our room was our only option.
Not what I had imagined for Emily's expensive birthday treat.
It was only after some quick thinking, and a significant amount of arm-twisting on our
part, that we persuaded the hotel to let us put Arthur in a cot in a spare bedroom in
the main house. The room was close enough to the bar and restaurant for us to listen
in on our own baby monitor. Emily and I had cocktails in front of a video screen of a
roaring fire in the bar (that's Babington style for you), played pool on the funky purple
baize table and had a reasonable meal.
But enough specifically on Babington. I want to explore the general issue of how to ensure
your child is sleeping soundly in your hotel room while you're having a well deserved drink
and meal.
Even when babysitting works smoothly, it's usually far from ideal. There's the expense,
and unless you're in a bedroom with a separate living room it can be awkward.
We stayed in another supposedly familyoriented hotel recently. Like Babington, it insisted
we had a babysitter in the evening.
It worked out OK, but only after we'd put Arthur's cot in what was virtually a cupboard
and fiddled with the lighting so that the babysitter could read and Arthur wouldn't
be disturbed.
The hotel manager told me the reason they insist on guests using babysitters was that
it was against the law to leave children unattended in a hotel bedroom.
'That's a complete copout,' says Ruth Gallop, marketing director of Luxury Family Hotels.
'They simply don't want to spend the money on installing a listening service.' LUXURY
Family Hotels is a highly successful group of four hotels in Wiltshire, Dorset, Cornwall
and Suffolk. The hotels have sophisticated child-monitoring systems that link the bedrooms
to the reception.
A receptionist constantly checks the system and if a baby is heard crying, he or she simply
goes and gets a parent - you're asked not to leave the hotel premises.
We stayed at The Ickworth, the group's hotel in Suffolk, when Arthur was very young. We
were a bit unsure about relying exclusively on the system and kept popping up to the room
to double-check he was all right. But now Arthur is older, and we're more relaxed parents,
I think we'd be more confident of such a system - if the staff seemed professional and vigilant.
When staying in a hotel you can, of course, try to use your own baby monitor - the kind
that most parents have at home these days. For the uninitiated, you put the baby's unit
in the bedroom and keep the parent's unit, which can be batteryoperated, with you - in
the hotel's restaurant, say. Any noise your baby makes is transmitted to your unit.
From personal experience, I have found you can't rely on the standard analogue monitors
to work properly, or at all.
Often, they pick up interference, and transmission is severely weakened, or broken, by the many
walls that typify the layout of hotels.
On recent hotel stays I tried out two pricey alternative baby monitors to see if they work
any better.
My findings are on the right.
For comprehensive tips on taking babies on holiday, consult our Advice banks at...
PHILIPS DIGITAL BABY MONITOR PHILIPS DIGITAL BABY MONITOR Supplied by Dutchwest (01434
323232) for [pounds sterling]116.54 (inc p&p) THIS digital baby monitor has 120 channels
from which to select, promises 'zero interference' and has an operating range of about 50 yards
indoors and nearly 330 outside.
It worked like a dream when we set it up at home. But in the first hotel I tried it out
in, it was hardly any better than our analogue monitor. The signal gave up 30 yards down
the corridor from our bedroom.
At the second hotel - a much smaller establishment - it worked just fine over dinner and more
effectively than our analogue monitor.
BEBETEL EXTRA BEBETEL EXTRA Supplied by Bestworld Trading (0870 444 3794, www.bestworld.co.uk)
and priced at [pounds sterling]154.90 (inc p&p) THE ingenious-sounding Bebetel is manufactured
in Switzerland.
You plug the unit into a bedroom phone socket and programme a phone number - for example,
your mobile - into the unit. If your baby cries, your mobile rings. The system doesn't
rely on radio waves so it circumvents problems of interference and range.
The instructions are clear and it worked perfectly at home, but turned out to be unusable in
the hotels. At one hotel, the phone cord from the unit wouldn't go into our bedroom socket;
at the other, we couldn't get a signal on our mobile.