Hotelier picks up the reins again after ‘naughty step’ banishment

HOTELIER Keith Richardson is back. Ten months after administrators took over his multi-million hotel empire, he has returned to the driving seat. The 80-year-old businessman said: “This is the start of a new era.”

Back in January, Mr Richardson said he had no choice but to call in the administrators when he was faced with a court writ to wind up the company over an unpaid £600,000 VAT bill from the taxman and the bank would not lend him the cash.

Mr Richardson said: “It was a shock when a firm of accountants comes in and kicks you out of your chair, takes over your office and your bank account.”

RSM Restructuring Advisory took the helm of Richardson Hotels Limited and Fowey Hotel Limited, both subsidiaries of Richardson Hotels Holdings which operates the 132-bedroom Grand Hotel in Torquay, the 71-bedroom Falmouth Hotel in Falmouth and 58-bedroom Metropole Hotel in Padstow, Cornwall, which all sat within Richardson Hotels Limited alongside Fowey Hotel Limited’s 52-bedroom Royal Beacon Hotel in Exmouth, Devon and the 37-bedroom Fowey Hotel in Fowey, Cornwall.

In February, Mr Richardson sold the Metropole and Fowey Hotels to Harbour Hotels for around £18 million, which was used to pay the bank and other creditors. And his Rolls-Royce Phantom and helicopter have been sold too, bringing in an extra £300,000.

He said: “When you haven’t got any money, it’s expensive to run these things. It was embarrassing going into administration. But you can’t afford to have expensive toys when your company is in the hands of administrators and I let down my creditors who had not been paid for a year.”

But he said the creditor debts have been repaid with 8% interest.

And he said it was the first time the administrators had been able to hand assets back to a company.

“They’ve had to learn how to do it,” he said.

But the process hasn’t been cheap, costing £1.5m when Mr Richardson believes the bank could have stepped in to loan him the cash needed to pay the VAT bill, allowing him to sell the hotels himself to pay off the other debts without administrators.

He said: “They didn’t want to know because I had been naughty and I’m still on the naughty step.

“Now, I’m with a different bank but I am still somewhat of a pariah despite all of these assets.”

But the hotel formerly known as The Grosvenor is a different story.

The 47-bedroom hotel continues to trade in administration after Mr Richardson said he spent far too much money in a bid to shake off its infamous reputation when the hotel was run by Mark Jenkins and appeared on Channel 4’s reality show The Hotel.

He bought it in 2012, and welcomed John Burton-Race as head chef after a £1m revamp in 2016 before it was rebranded as John Burton Race Restaurant with Rooms in 2017.

But the partnership was short-lived with Burton Race parting company with the hotel chain in August.

Keith Richardson at the Grand Hotel in Torquay

Since then, the hotel has been re-branded as Abbey Sands.

Mr Richardson said: “With hindsight, I wish I had never bought it.”

He said he hadn’t seen Mr Jenkins since he bought the hotel and wrongly assumed at the time that any publicity is good publicity.

He said: “I didn’t think it would be quite so negative. But all anybody wanted to do was take a photo in front of the Grosvenor sign and put it on Facebook.”

And despite a dream of bringing five-star food to Torquay, the association with Burton Race didn’t work out. He said: “I employed him because he makes beautiful food but it just wasn’t commercial in terms of the cost of his brigade and the ingredients.

“Basically, we couldn’t sell enough hot dinners to cover its costs, so we parted company.

“There is a market for beautiful food in Torbay. The Elephant does well, No.7 fish restaurant and the Orchid at the Corbyn Head Hotel. My favourite phrase in the Michelin Guide is ‘worth a detour’ but it was just a dream.”

Now the hotel has been re-branded as Abbey Sands and has a new man- ager and chef. “There is no point looking backwards, the past is the past,” Mr Richardson says.

“We have to make the best of it and it will make a profit,” he said.

The son of a chief cashier and a teacher, Mr Richardson said he learned about fixing cars, DIY and how local authorities work at his dad’s elbow growing up in Liverpool.

Graduating with a degree in economics and accounting from Hull University, he went on to complete his articles with an accountancy firm, staying there for 12 years, until 1972 before striking out on his own.

“That was the only real job I had and I was sacked from two others – one as chairman of Torquay United after 10 days in 2007 and another as a business mentor with South Devon College.”

By 1963, he had bought his first house for £1,500 converting the top floors into two separate flats each paying £8 a week rent and paying the mortgage with a bit left over.

By 1990, he owned 200 apartments across Manchester.

A holiday in Corfu in 1972 led him to buying his own speedboat and with nowhere to use it in Cheshire, he em- barked on a five week holiday in St Mawes and eventually bought a holiday home there.

That led him to buy The Idle Rocks Hotel in the late eighties. He said: “Suddenly I was a hotelier and every three years, I bought a new one.”

Now, after what he terms ‘a lot of pain’, his hotel group has a new MD and senior team and has dropped staff numbers from 500 to 350.

He said: “We have worked with the administrators and, as an accountant, I knew what the next step was going to be. Our job now is to hunker down and let the new team bed in. I’ve no doubt that the business is better than it was a year ago and we have got new energy and fresh blood.”

When trouble hit, Mr Richardson was asked by the administrator why didn’t he just retire.

He said: “I told him to b****r off. “I do it because I like it. I was listening to Tim Martin on Desert Island Discs and he was asked the same question and he said: “Well I’ve been thinking about it, I’m 60 now so I think I’ve got another 40 years beforeI retire,” and I know exactly where he’s coming from.”