HOW TO DO IT
Branson’s take on his brand
HE started with a small student magazine and graduated to spaceships, but at the very core of Sir Richard Branson’s empire has long been the travel industry.
So, with an airline and several luxury retreats under his belt, it was only a matter of time until he turned his attention to chain hotels.
The first, Virgin Hotels Chicago, opened in 2015, and a few weeks ago, work officially began on what will be the UK’s first Virgin hotel, housed in Edinburgh’s historic India Buildings and expected to open in 2020, with 225 rooms.
First things first, why Edinburgh? “My grandparents were from Edinburgh and my wife, Joan, is also Scottish, so the country has always held a special place in my heart,” he says. Virgin isn’t the only international group to have zoned in on the historic capital: a W Hotel is due to open there in 2021. Branson is poised to compete with the weapon he holds most dear: “happy staff”.
“If you can be proud of the brand you work for, if your staff are listened to, and not just listened to but their points actioned and dealt with, then people have no reason to leave a company,” he says.
Is it really so simple? What advice would he give to any employee who likes the company they work for, but is saddled with a horrid boss?
“Sadly, I think that, most likely, they need to move on,” he says.
“A bad boss can completely destroy the morale of a company. It may stumble on and make money, but what a miserable existence for everybody working there.
“The reason people often leave companies is because they have great ideas and nobody listens. Hopefully, throughout Virgin, we’ve got really good leaders who don’t just listen to their own voices.”
Case in point: Virgin Hotels Chicago – which Telegraph Travel’s Kate Silver reviewed as being “as stylish and cheeky as you’d expect from Richard Branson’s brand”, with staff who were suitably “friendly”.
Catering specifically for women, as the Chicago hotel did, is crucial.
The Chicago property is designed with showers that have inbuilt benches to make it easier for guests to shave their legs, decent powerful hairdryers, and sliding doors that separate the bedroom from the dressing room area for the sake of privacy, with “peepholes” so that the guests can see staff deliver room service from the other side, but not vice versa.
Another differentiator, Branson says, will be the sort of advanced technology not yet adopted by many chain hotels in the UK.
Check-in will be speedy and involve touchscreens, similar to modern airport check-in kiosks, and a smartphone app will enable guests to control everything from the temperature of their room to the delivery of goods. Another hotel pet peeve of Branson’s is extra charges for things like Wi-Fi (it will always be fast and free, he says), and extortionate minibar prices. “We don’t charge through the roof for things like that,” he says.
If we can expect anything from Britain’s first Virgin hotel, it will be continuous tweaks, says Branson, citing his approach to hospitality on Virgin Atlantic.
“I fly Virgin a lot – any long complicated routes and I’ll jump on a Virgin plane,” he says.
“I think it’s important to sample your own products, meet your own people and talk to your passengers. I always have a notebook in my pocket and at the end of every journey I’ll have 20 little things scribbled down,” Branson says. Such as?
“If the cabin crew have been given lovely new red shoes but they’re rubbing their heels, it’s important to make sure those shoes are thrown away and they get a new pair.
“If one of the passengers asks for a kosher meal and it’s not delivered, it’s critical that never ever happens again. This year, Virgin Atlantic sold a 31% stake to Air France-KLM for £220m (R3.9-billion) and Virgin America was merged into Alaska Airlines in April.
I ask Branson what he makes of the aviation industry today, compared with how it was 30 years ago when he started out. More merging, he argues, can’t be the way forward.
“I think in the future, the job of governments should be to encourage competition and not to merge and merge and merge until there’s no companies left. ” —