HOSPITALITY: ICONIC LUXURY HOTELS
With travel outside the UK off the table, Iconic Luxury Hotels were able to capitalise on a staycation boom over the summer, although there was a sharp divide in demand between its rural and city properties.
‘We were ‘belt and braces’ when it came to our Covid procedures,’ explains executive director, Andrew Stembridge. ‘So we take people’s temperatures, for example.’ The company also required its staff to wear masks before this became a legal requirement. We wanted everyone to feel safe.’
Over the summer, hotels like The Lygon Arms in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, and Chewton Glen in New Milton, Hampshire proved hugely popular, while the company’s London hotel, 11 Cadogan Gardens, was far less in demand. ‘It was all leisure customers, and no big groups, and of course no weddings,’ Andrew says. ‘But we got into the rhythm of it. Hotel restaurants did well, as customers chose to eat in rather than go out to other establishments, and people tended to spend more. ‘They weren’t able to go on other holidays, so they ordered nicer wine, for example,’ Andrew says. ‘A stay in our hotels isn’t usually people’s main holiday, but this year it has been the only one.’ The challenge for the company has been to keep to CovidSafe guidelines at the same time as ‘keeping it luxurious’, with customers feeling relaxed.
‘We’d been told by hotels elsewhere in the world, such as the US, that customers wouldn’t want us in their rooms for room service. That wasn’t the case, though. Having paid for someone to do all this for them after lockdown, most people wanted that.’
Andrew is apprehensive about what new restrictions could bring, and unimpressed with some of the current restrictions on hospitality.
The 10pm curfew is already an issue in his hotels, where he says it ‘doesn’t make much sense’. ‘If people are in the middle of a rural area and sitting at a table in a restaurant in a hotel they are staying in anyway. That is very different to them being in a bar in town,’ he says.
Further local lockdown restrictions could curb people’s hotel stays over the winter, but he’s hopeful that there will be people wanting to stay in hotels to do Christmas shopping. ‘And if it is going to be a quiet Christmas for just families or just couples we will see people booking into hotels.’