Profiles

Birches Serviced Apartments

A family motel business and a background in nursing launched Jennie Scheffler’s career in hospitality. Now the successful owner of Birches Serviced Apartments on Simpson St, Jennie’s first hospitality job was on reception at the Old Melbourne Hotel on Flemington Rd back in 1985. “Today it has been turned into student lodgings but in those days it was quite a prestigious hotel. It was a gorgeous building with an amazing courtyard in the middle that went right through to the car park with a heated swimming pool and gardens that were just stunning,” Jennie said.

“The reception was computerised already and I didn’t really have a lot of experience so it was all quite daunting, the family motel was out in the country and had 34 rooms and the Old Melbourne Hotel had 250 rooms. Somehow I always got the feeling that they gave me the job because of my nursing background, perhaps they thought having a qualified nurse in the hotel would be a benefit,” she said.

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Whatever the truth of that Jennie learned quickly in the busy hotel environment and made a lot of good friends too. She even put her nursing background to good use by administering first-aid in the guest rooms a couple of times. “I had an absolute ball there and I really met a lot of great people but I saved absolutely no money,” she confessed.

To remedy her financial situation Jennie decided to move up to Queensland and got a job on the floating hotel that was moored 72km offshore on the Great Barrier Reef. “They built this big ship in Singapore and brought it across to Townsville. There were 250 rooms and it had a helicopter landing pad, I think it was the first of its kind in the world.”

However, after a year the floating hotel ran into problems. “It was moored so far offshore that it gave people the feeling of being stranded. Sometimes conditions weren’t right and guests were struggling to get out there and back,” Jennie said.

The ship ended up in Vietnam where it is apparently very successful but moored safely in a port.

After a brief stint on a prawn trawler off the coast of Darwin (that failed to live up to all the horror stories she’d heard but did bank her $15,000 in six short weeks), Jennie returned to Melbourne. She took a job as front office manager at Batman’s Hill Hotel on Spencer Street and stayed for eight years before moving to Albert Heights serviced apartments for another eight years. Then four years ago an opportunity came up to buy the management rights to a rival property – Birches Serviced Apartments – and Jennie’s journey from rookie receptionist to successful owner/manager was complete.

Green, clean and pet friendly too
Birches Serviced Apartments is a three storey complex of mostly one-bedroom apartments in East Melbourne. It prides itself on friendly service, affordable accommodation and high standards. But it has a little secret too; some of its guests have four legs!

Hairy hounds and fluffy felines might seem like a recipe for disaster but the team at Birches has shown that allowing dogs and cats into their four-star property is no barrier to award-winning cleanliness. Owner Jennie Scheffler said that thanks to strict regulations the apartments are maintained extremely well and no one would ever know a cat or dog had been near the place. “I have found that I’m so strict about the policies that the rooms are absolutely spotless. That is a comment we often get from our guests, how clean the rooms are,” she said.

To prove the point last year Birches Serviced Apartments won an excellence in housekeeping award from HMAA and Victorian Tourism thanks to the diligence of housekeeper, Gul Kurtoglu. This was the latest in a string of awards the Birches team have picked up over the last four years.

Jennie Scheffler took over Birches at a time when SARS and 9/11 had put a serious dent in occupancy. The previous owner’s marriage break-up added to the difficult trading situation so the East Melbourne property was ripe for improvement. Since that time Jennie has worked hard to deliver excellent and affordable accommodation to the many domestic and overseas travellers who visit the park-like suburb for leisure, family or business. Through hard work and good service the occupancy has been raised to an enviable 94.5% (at the end of the last financial year) and Jennie described the Melbourne short-term accommodation scene as absolutely booming.

“Things have really taken off in Victoria and tourism is fantastic here. We’ve also got around 1000 people a week relocating to Melbourne and there just isn’t the housing for them,” explained Jennie. “So people are staying in serviced apartments for two or three months until they find permanent accommodation. We are benefiting from that and being pet friendly is a real bonus because a high percentage of people who are relocating have a dog or a cat, so to come to Birches is just heaven on a stick for them,” she said.

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The decision to cater for pets was something that “just happened” as a flow on from Jennie living on-site for three years with her own dog, Poncho, a Maltese Bichon that she described as a small, cute, white fluff ball. “I reckon 99% of people who came into the office would say ‘oh my gosh how lovely there’s a little dog here’ and the kids would be running round to have a look,” Jennie said. “People would ask ‘can we bring our dogs here too?’ so I started thinking why can’t we become pet friendly? I know whenever I went away my dog fretted and I fretted about him and I’d love to have been able to take him with me,” she said.

Jenny quietly started accepting guests with their pet dogs and cats. She didn’t advertise it in many places and still keeps it a low profile to ensure her other guests are not offended or worried about the hygiene aspect.

When checking in with a dog or cat (that must be a non-moulting variety) guests need to come prepared with a few extra items. First, animals must go offsite for their litter (there is a park across the road) so owners need to bring bags for tidying up the mess. They need to bring their own bedding for their pet and bring two sheets, one to cover the couch and one to put down on the lounge room floor.

They also have to bring their own bowls and utensils. And finally, dogs are not allowed to be too yappy.

Currently around 5% of guests travel with their pets and the figure is slowly rising. “The staff like to joke and call this place Birches on Noah’s Ark,” Jennie said. Once, in a moment of weakness, Jennie accepted reservations for all 24 apartments from people who were exhibiting their cats in the Melbourne cat show. “Some of them were big fluffy cats, the kind we normally don’t allow but they all had their own cages and I thought it would be okay.” In fact, even though the cats only stayed for one night, Jennie ended up calling in the steam-cleaners to get the fur out of a couple of rooms. Since then she has maintained her policies more strictly than ever.

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As well as being a friend to pets, Birches Serviced Apartments is also a friend to the environment achieving the AAA four-green star rating. To get this Jennie implemented a number of procedures into the property, including putting recycling bins into all the guest rooms. Signs in guest bathrooms advise people to take a four-minute shower and sheets are routinely laundered once a week, rather than every two or three days.

“I did a survey and asked people about the sheets and they said ‘well we only change our sheets once a week at home so why should it be any different here’,” said Jennie. “It’s useful because that’s really saved us a lot on our linen.”

There are also signs reminding guests to turn off lights and appliances and all rooms are supplied with a green enviro-bag for when they go to the supermarket.

As a final effort to help both the environment and the paperwork, Jennie is working on implementing a paperless office. “We are in the process of scanning all our files and they’ll be going into the computer so we’ll have a neat filing system.”

In all there are 24 apartments at Birches, 22 of them being one-bedroom units with one two-bedroom unit and one two-bedroom townhouse completing the picture. It is located just five minutes walk from Fitzroy Garden, 10 minutes from the Melbourne Cricket Ground in a fashionable part of Melbourne renowned for its beautiful parks, architecture and quiet tree-lined streets. The Birches’ website is full of information about the location, room layout and facilities including Internet access and free secure parking. But there is no mention of pets. For the moment at least that is a fairly closely guarded secret.

Please don’t let the cat out of the bag.

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