Okay so it’s been a long week [is it really only Wednesday ... oi oi oi] but this has been irritating me for about 3 years. Not in a daily ’shout at random people in the street with one pupil slightly dilated’ way, more a hmmm, why didn’t they just ‘acknowledge the problem, find a solution and move on’ sort of way.

The story begins a little over 3 years ago. I booked [online] a lovely 4 bed villa in Menorca for my family and friends. There were 8 of us including 4 little ones, the youngest being only 5 months old. This being our first visit to Menorca we didn’t know what to expect but this was a reputable company and the pictures were great so we booked anyway. We chose this particular villa because of it’s luxury swimming pool. At the time of booking I did question what qualities a swimming pool had to posses to be referred to as luxury. I hoped it meant having a tidal wave machine like the ones at Centre Parcs or maybe a full-serving bar island plonked in the middle. Alas I wasn’t even close, luxury in our case just meant infinity. Now I’ve nothing against infinity pools. In fact the idea of bathing in the comfort of your own salt water pool whilst pretending you are floating into the sunset rather appeals but to have an infinity pool without the sea view surely defeats the object of calling it an infinity pool. The furthest we could actually see was next door’s luxury / infinity swimming pool. Sadly there were no guests staying next door during our holiday but I did imagine the comical scene of me slurping margaritas in my infinity pool while staring at some equally white and flabby dude 30ft away in his infinity pool.

Anyway back to the ant story. I have a lot of respect for ants. Did you know there are more than 12,000 species of the little critters and they date back around 60 million years or so. And, as someone once told me, if you put all the people on the planet together [about 6.5 billion of us] we would weigh exactly the same as all the ants. My first thought was wow … no way … and my second thought was … you are talking out of the top of your hat? For a start how do you know how much us humans collectively weigh? I for example fluctuate daily between slightly obese [according to my BMI] and a bit podgy! I was also slightly suspicious because this was the same guy that told me Neil Armstrong wasn’t actually the first man on the moon and that the Russians had been there 20 years before but because TV hadn’t officially been invented that nobody knew about it

So here we are, 8 of us enjoying the first day of our holiday when my very good friend Nim spotted a trail of ants crawling along the wall. We decided to follow the trail down the wall, through the window, over the bed, along the corridor, slight detour through the bathroom and then onto the kitchen. Okay so now all we have to do is revome the source ie a few crumbs of baguette we’d had for lunch, the ants would then realise they’ve met their match, regroup and wander off next door. The first part of our plan worked a treat. The second part, however, didn’t materialise either because these particular ants were a very homely bunch or because the house was built directly on a vast ant city. We clearly had a problem!

After consulting the villa handbook we found that Menorca does indeed have ants .. lots of them, something to do with the Volcanic rock being especially tasty. It recommended getting a can of ant killer and spraying them from time to time. This, it said, would cure the problem and allow us to have a restful and relaxing holiday. So, after 3 cans of ant spray and only a few corpses to show for it we decided to contact the agent for the house. The very nice English lady visited us that afternoon and yes, saw a few ants and the remains of our recently unsuccessful double pronged attack on the little blighters. She then assured us that we had achieved our goal and we would have no more problems.

Angela [I can't actually remember her real name but I seem to recall she looked like an Angela] came and inspected the same hideous [if you're an ant] scenes of carnage for the next 4 days and each time reassured us that everything was fine. Ants? What ants? I don’t see any ants? Eventually we grew tired of this daily ritual and asked to be moved to an ant free villa .. she refuses! Says that we don’t have an ant problem and that we are just being troublesome [she didn't use the word troublesome but that's what she meant]. Anyway this saga continued, we checked our contract, she switched off her phone. Eventually we gave up trying and stayed, each day performing our morning and evening annihilation ritual. We became masters in ant control laying traps by putting tiny pieces of sugar on the floor, waiting for the trail to appear and then zapping it with the spray. And yes we became slightly obsessed but that’s only because we’d paid a lot of money and goddamit we WOULD have a nice time!

After 14 nights we left and vowed never to return or book through the same company and we’d make sure we caused as much bad press as we could.

The point of this story for all owners and agents of holiday accommodation is to realise that there is always a solution to a problem that leaves both parties satisfied with the outcome. All Angela needed to do was acknowledge we had a problem, support us in finding an immediate solution and then failing that compensate us in some way. She succeeded in her short term [and short sighted] goal of saving money by not moving us to alternative accommodation but she failed to understand the medium to long term imapct of her actions. Ultimately she has lost our business. She has also lost the business of our family and friends, and our work colleagues and then probably some of their family and friends … in fact the ripples go on and on. So the real negative cost to her company in the medium to long term will have been far greater than any short term solution she could have offered. The lesson to learn from all this is not to forget that customer relationship management is far more important to the long term success of your holiday rental business than any short term moral or financial gains.