Category: accommodation

I’ve known since I was six years old that I wanted to run my own restaurant. I think it stemmed from my desire to be the manager of something, since even at that tender age I was chafing under the authority of my parents and I desperately wanted to be the boss. And if I was the boss of a hotel, then I would be the boss of everyone in it. And it wasn’t like being the boss of a restaurant, which has people in it sometimes and not other times. No, a hotel is always full of people, so I’d control all of them, and send them off to bed when I like!

Of course, that dream has matured somewhat, but I’d still love to manage a hotel, or at least some beach apartments. Somewhere in Lorne perhaps…lovely beach accommodation, not too bustling, unlike Sorrento in the summer. You’d have to have some serious chops to manage something out there in the rush months. My only experience comes from having watched the entire series of Salty Towers, which is really no experience at all, so I’m betting there are some courses I can do to learn how it all works. I’d expect there’s an entire elective on how to multitask, since hotel management sounds like a minefield of forgotten tasks and employees running this way and that, doing whatever they please in forgotten corners. Or maybe I’m just letting my enjoyment of Salty Towers colour my actual expectations. There’s still plenty to deal with, however.

If I went the beach apartment route, perhaps that’d be best for a beginner. I’d still be looking for a course to manage all the finances and such, but I really think I could start off with just that. People come along and just live in apartments like they would normally. No room service or front desk, just online and phone bookings. Maybe I should take a trip down to the Great Ocean Road and see the accommodation, ask people what’s involved. I really feel like I ready to make the step into business.

-Laura

It’s been a long time, getting from there to here, but for me, I really feel that this is the final frontier. In these voyages, I have travelled so far, so much further than I ever thought I would. It has been my continuous mission to seek out a new life for myself and a different way of living, and although I may not have gone anywhere no man has gone before, I’ve often felt like it.

Now, however, I’m beginning to feel that it’s time to settle down. On my wanderings, I passed through a town hosting a conference, and had a very strange conversation with a man who kept proclaiming that the town had the best conference venues regional Victoria has to offer. In fairness to him, he’d had several rather large glasses of beer at that point, but his drunken raving caused me to reflect. Until that time, I hadn’t even been entirely sure I was in Victoria. I try to avoid the beaten track as much as possible, preferring to move through the bush and live off the land, but this can sometimes be a disorientating way to live.

When I enquired as to the name of the town, he looked surprised, although through the fog of hops and barley I’m not altogether surprised, and replied solemnly that it was Lorne, and that he himself was staying at the greatest of the Great Ocean Road hotels. I tried to wrestle the name of it out of him, but this task proved almost impossible. I walked the man back to his lodgings, and caught the name at the reception, but it took most of my strength just to persuade him in through the front door and I find now that it’s entirely slipped my mind.

Walking through the streets at night, Lorne had a certain ambiance I found extremely inviting. I think I shall stay here for a while.