Inverness hotels confident they will bounce back in style
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A SUMMER surge in visitors has revitalised the city’s hotel trade, with leading light Tony Story, owner of the five star Ness Walk and plush Kingsmills establishments, expressing cautious optimism for a continued recovery into autumn.
Within an industry naturally hit hard by lockdown restrictions since the pandemic struck, the local hotel trade has shown buoyancy and resilience in the face of huge challenges arising from issues such as a dramatic reduction in numbers of overseas guests.
As Mr Story can relate, only through ingenuity, government support and by carefully embracing the new era of social-distancing restrictions has this vital city sector reopened, rebuilt, protected jobs and restored visitor confidence.
Amid all the retraining of staff and painstaking reshaping of interior premises, subtler changes such as discarding the requirement for advance deposits have enabled the Storys’ family business – with wife Anne and son James integral – to operate flexibly amid a rise in cancellations and sharp trend towards last-minute bookings.
Mr Story has vast industry experience, having run hotels in South Africa and other parts of Africa, in France and across the UK, before a desire to return to parental roots saw him resettle in Inverness.
None of those past experiences could have fully prepared him for the thunderbolt that struck in March. While businesses had to close, paradoxically the Story family had rarely been busier.
The 147-bedroom Kingsmills, with its diverse accommodation styles and restaurants, had reached optimum size with expansion from 86 rooms since acquisition in 2007, so the Storys sought business growth through Ness Walk.
Acquired in September 2017, the luxuriously refurbished 47-bedroom outlet opened in June last year as only the city’s second – and largest – five star hotel.
With lockdown, almost 200 staff at the two hotels had to be furloughed.
“It already seems a lifetime ago, but it was an incredibly busy time trying to get the business into a shape where we could survive whatever was to come,” he said. “It was everything from how we would look after our employees to what we would do with lots of barrels of beer that were going to go off.
“If you think back, there was no clear idea of what was ahead. It wasn’t a case of knowing we’d be back to normal in six months’ time.
“There was a very short space of time for us to get everything battened down. The Job Retention Scheme was an absolutely huge relief, but we had to talk to many suppliers and restructure contracts, while simultaneously holding discussions with our bankers, who have been fantastic.
“We took out additional debt as a fire-fighting fund to take us through difficulties and we’ve had other help from Highlands and Island Enterprise. We’re still going through the process with the £14 million hotel fund announced by Scottish Government.”
Like other hotel operators, the Storys had only a few days’ notice before reopening on June 15.
“That was extremely difficult. If we thought we were busy before, trying to reopen was enormously difficult!” Mr Story said. “There was a whole new environment to get used to in social distancing, face masks, hygiene procedures and perspex screening.
“We put in new work procedures with everyone needing to be retrained with things like the buffet system, the lifeblood of hotels for the past 20 years, dispensed with.
“We had to find different ways of doing things, keeping people as safe as we possibly could. We wouldn’t claim to have got everything right straight away, but by and large we’ve done extremely well.”
Nobody within the industry would pretend everything is plain sailing. Concerns and great challenges remain.
But ahead of the traditionally quiet winter period, with events and conferencing still mothballed, there is genuine optimism that the domestic staycation market will fortify hotels like his.
“We started really well in July, when there was a pent-up desire from people to get out and about and socialise. A lot of people were brave and put their faith in us. We’re very grateful,” My Story said.
“But there still is no events or meetings business, so much rests on our core bedroom and restaurant business.
“We started to get back to full occupancy in both hotels in July. How it will pan out over the next four weeks is new territory, but August and September have been absolutely brilliant, with occupancy of somewhere around 97 per cent. Inverness generally has occupancy of around 86 per cent, which is extremely strong.
“Our room rates were significantly down on a normal summer, but we’re just absolutely delighted to get guests back into our hotels. As guests’ habits change we find, say, 75 per cent of bookings are for reservations within the next two weeks.
“The current situation has taken the rest of the world out of the equation. We’re definitely selling to a Scottish market rather than wall-to-wall US, Asian and European visitors. Some traditionally great markets like golf visitors have been hit by restrictions like the one household rule for bedrooms.
“But we’ve had high occupancy and most hotel operators are delighted with what they have had.”
The cautious optimism is echoed by Inverness Hotel Association chairman Emmanuel Moine, manager of the Glen Mhor hotel, who said: “While we were expecting a quiet summer, we have all been hit by last-minute bookings by surprise.
“The Highlands has been the second destination in the UK behind the Lake District. We still face many issues, but we are working together as colleagues and as an industry to move forward.”
