British Hotel Retweets What They Believe Is A Glowing Jay Rayner Review

Reading! It’s a thing that civilized people must know how to do, especially people in charge of British hotel social media feeds. In fact, England boasts one of the highest functional illiteracy rates in the developed world, with nearly one in five Brits unable to read beyond a 9th grade level. And apparently, whoever mans the Twitter feed of the Capital Hotel in London is the 20%.

Last night, they excitedly tweeted a link to Jay Rayner’s review of the hotel’s restaurant, run by chef Nathan Outlaw, perhaps missing the review’s point entirely. A brief look at the review:

In short, this is a seafood restaurant for people who don’t like seafood. All the essentials – terrific breads, salted butter, crisp fishcakes – are present and correct. But the edges have been smoothed away… Service has a sense of the clicked heel about it. I understand that some people want all this. I imagine that some even claim to like it. But none of those people are me.

“Fantastic review!” they tweeted (now removed).

“Er, glad you liked it,” Rayner responded, confused.

Inevitably, a few hours later, Rayner wrote this:

How odd. That tweet by @hotelcapital has vanished. Though the RT of it by @levinhotel (same company) is still there.

— Jay Rayner (@jayrayner1) January 28, 2013

As of now, The Levin Hotel’s alleged tweet is gone too. Someone has saved England’s potentially-illiterate PR flacks from this terrible social tragedy. Hip hip hooray, etc., and civilization marches onwards.

[Twitter]

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