Veryan Palmer should be looking forward to her Cornish hotel’s best ever November. Instead, she is having to shut rooms at the five-star establishment
The Headland hotel in Cornwall has been in Veryan Palmer’s family all her life. Her parents bought the imposing Victorian pile overlooking Fistral Beach, Newquay, 43 years ago. Now Palmer, 37, is director. They have always had staff from Europe. “My parents would talk about when European countries joined the EU they would suddenly get an influx of staff from a new country,” she says. “They remember the summer that Poland joined and the sudden influx of Polish housekeeping staff who are just phenomenal.”
In 2019, about half the staff were non-British. Palmer attributes the identity and the success of the hotel – one of just two in the county with five stars – to them. “There is no chance we would be where we are now without the skills of people coming from other countries.”
