Hotelier of the week: Robert Cook

Robert Cook is CEO of Malmaison and Hotel du Vin

How are things with Hotel du Vin and Malmaison?

Pretty good. From March and April this year we started to see business coming back and coming back with some consistency. Bookings are still very last minute and we are now living with that and understanding it and building it into our model, but we had a very good July and August, and September was the best month of the year. We are now going into the strongest period and rates in Hotel du Vin particularly are looking at pre-recession days, with Malmaison catching up day by day.

London has remained strong for many hotel brands but with so many of your properties in the UK regions, can you see which are underperforming?

Yes, very clearly. Aberdeen is in its own micro-climate and is booming, but aside from that, in the provincial UK, so Henley, Tunbridge Wells, York and Harrogate, we have seen gentle growth. Where we are still seeing difficulties is on the M62 corridor – Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. Those are the three cities where we have been hardest hit. In Manchester it was over supply just as things were going wrong and then a rate war with the big boys dumping rates. Funnily enough, Manchester has had difficult times on rooms but has had a very strong time on F&B, which has grown 12% during the downturn. We have had some post-construction problems in Liverpool, with having to reclad the exterior of the building so it being covered in scaffolding. That has affected rates.

What can you do about rates in these properties?

Our tool in the box is leveraging off how good our F&B is – not just throwing in a dinner with bed and breakfast, but various promotions to make people come and stay with us. In total we have £112 million turnover and yet have just shy of £50 million on F&B. Hotel du Vin is fundamentally a restaurant with rooms. In general, weekends have stayed strong but it was the corporate market that dried up.

What about expansion plans?

For Hotel du Vin, although we did try and divest the St Andrews property the values weren’t there and so we have a robust scheme in place to open a 21 bedroom Hotel du Vin by April of next year. In addition, we are looking at various options to raise more capital in a side car vehicle to expand the Hotel du Vin in the UK. We are sitting on [land] in Cantebury which we want to develop, and Durham, Chester and Chichester are definitely on our radar scheme, and we are in hot pursuit of a Hotel du Vin in Aberdeen. It would be foolish not to, the Malmaison there is trading so well. And fundamentally that would take a further restaurant to a culinary desert and another 40 rooms. I could bolt on another 40 rooms to the existing Malmaison but I’d rather have another restaurant as well.

And Malmaison?

We are stretching our legs and getting outside the UK. We're looking at lease and management contracts predominantly and we are negotiating in Paris and Venice. We visited Rome and we hope to get something going there soon. But our real aspiration is to take Malmaison to the US. We are in very early negotiations with a big fund in the US to take it over there and roll it out in the US.

You must have tried that before.

Our strategy originally was to go and talk to the InterCons, the Marriots, the Hiltons, the Hyatts about holding onto their coat tails and running with them. We got reactions like the attraction is outweighed by the distraction, and we had these conversations just as the world is going silly. Equally, one or two said they wanted to do their own thing. So we are still here, sitting, waiting for one of the bigger guys to come and talk to us. But there is no question that there is a different mechanic to running a boutique brand, and it’s not about design and revenue systems, it’s about culture, and what we’ve got here is hard to replicate but we could certainly extend it.

Any plans for a loyalty programme?

Yes. We are working very hard in launching a new loyalty card in June of next year. Points in the programme will be dependent on spend. It’s modelled on the British Airways Executive Club model, where the more you spend on a seat, the more points you get, so the more you spend on a bed, the more you get, as well as in the restaurants and in our spas. It will be cross brand across the 26 hotels (12 Malmaison and 14 Hotel du Vin properties totalling 1,900 bedrooms) across the UK. My idea is to have the silver, gold and platinum tiers as well, so the more loyalty you show, the more benefits you get such as upgrades, perhaps a left-laundry service where we can launder clothing and have it ready for corporates when they return the next week, or for international guests, to keep hold of their toiletries so they don't have to worry about leaving them behind if they are passing through airports and then buying a new set when they return after the weekend. We are aiming to have benefits that mean something to corporate travellers. They are very expensive to run but we are doing quite a lot of it through the web. You get a card if you want one, but it will be a virtual club

As you expand economies of scale will argue with the individuality...

That’s the biggest fight. Our success in F&B and the high turnover as compared with rooms revenue is because each of our restaurants buys local products from local producers. That tells the public that we take food seriously, and we are keen on provenance and want to know where the food came from and we’re supporting the local community. It works very well for us.

That will be tough for management contracts

They are buying the name, the brand, the DNA, and the spirit, and with the better RevPAR (revenue per available room) we can produce and better F&B there are associated costs, which includes the produce we buy and the way we cook it. It’s not slavish – if we open in Paris we would have a great steakhouse serving Aberdeen Angus beef, because it’s the best there is. There’s local and there’s provenance. If we did the boucherie and the open grill it would work fantastically there.

What about Hotel du Vin?

Hotel du Vin will stay in the UK. It has an elasticity. I’d like it to become Du Vin, and within that a Hotel du Vin, a Hotel du Vin Deluxe, a Bistro du Vin (high street restaurants), a Pub du Vin and Retreat du Vin. You couldn’t do a Hotel du Vin in Ludlow, but you could do a 12-bedroom Pub du Vin. I’m a branding boy at heart and it’s exciting to have two brands, one of which is like a hard-edge Maserati that can go into Europe and works in London and Hotel du Vin which is more like a Morgan and can continue to tour the UK.