Andrew Deighan took over at the Doubletree by Hilton Central hotel 18 months ago. Susan Young caught up with him to find out how he has found the challenge.
Andrew Deighan, General Manager of the DoubleTree by Hilton Glasgow Central, was looking forward to hosting his company’s annual staff awards on the day we met.
I usually meet with him to discuss our own awards, and he certainly, although relishing the challenge of hosting, was somewhat anxious. After all, just about the entire company was about to descend upon the hotel. He smiles, “We have a great team here and we are organised but even so when it’s your own event it can be nerve-wracking.”
Not than Andrew looks nervous, indeed he looks as relaxed as ever and is just as charming, as I have come to expect. He really is the consummate professional, you never get him any other way but cheery.
No doubt this is a skill he has honed over the years, and although he has spent the majority of his career in hospitality, his time working for Unilever in sales he admits brought a new dimension to his skill set which is entirely complementary to hospitality.
Hospitality is certainly in Andrew’s blood as he was brought up in the hotel business. He explains, “My dad went to the Shannon College of Hotel Management and spent his entire career in hotels, and I was brought up in them. He worked for Swallow Hotels back in the 80s and 90s before Marriot bought it, and my first job when we lived in Sunderland was working at the newly refurbished Seaburn Hotel.
Bellhops are Introduced
“After the refurbishment, they decided to introduce Bellhops and I used to work four hours a week after school – and had to wear a Bellhop uniform. I even ended up on the front page of our local newspaper wearing it. I earned the grand sum of £1.50 an hour, but I made a lot of tips.”
All through school, Andrew worked in the hotel and then went on to do a Hospitality Management degree at Huddersfield University which included an 18-month placement in the US working at the Crowne Plaza and Hilton in Washington DC.
In fact, by the time he returned to the UK, he had decided to return to work in the US, but life has a funny way of taking over and while at University he met his wife-to-be and ended up moving to London and joining the Hilton Metropole and starting family life.
Working for Unliver in Moscow
Then in 2006 he took a break from hospitality and went to work for Unilever – selling everything from Knorr Boullion to Flora and such like into commercial kitchens. Although he was not working in hospitality, he was working in a service industry to hospitality advising chefs on the best ingredients. This role took him to Russia for two years to train personnel there on Unilever products.
Says Andrew, “I lived in Moscow and had an apartment near the office which was right next to Red Square. My boss there was from Newcastle, so we were an interesting dynamic.
“However, there was not a huge amount of health and safety in Russian kitchens at the time. For instance, you would walk in and a chef would be cooking a pot of soup with a cigarette hanging out his mouth.
“It was a fabulous two years. We tried to integrate with the locals by going out on our own and using local transport, we even tried to learn Russian, although it is a difficult language, and my eldest son went to school there.”
When Andrew came back to the UK he stayed with Unilever but moved into ice cream – selling in Ben & Jerry’s to supermarkets such as Asda and Morrisons. Says Andrew, “The commercial experience that I gained at Unilever has been invaluable. Having grown up in hotels I had learned the operational side, but working in sales for Unilever taught me more about the commercial side of business than I could have imagined.
A Return to Hotels
He took this expertise and joined his father who by then was running a small hotel group in Sheffield called Aston Hotels. Andrew explains, “I went straight in as a General Manager so kind of skipped the intermediary roles, and I had four really good years there. I had been managing big accounts for Unilever and applied what I had learned to bring in new business.”
He adds, “Knowing the profit and loss side of the business is almost a given now and has become more important as our cost base has exploded. I then went to work for Fredrik Korallus, a 6ft 8” Swede and amazing guy, who was CEO of Puma Hotels, which had formerly been Paramount Hotels.
Taking the Reins at Marine Hotel
In 2013 I moved to Scotland with my family and took the reins at the Marine Hotel in Troon Marine – it was the first time on my own, the first time I had a General Manager’s role out with the family business. I loved it but I had to learn on my feet.
“The hotel has since had a fantastic makeover but at the time was in poor condition as Puma were struggling financially, but there was a great team there that worked hard. I learned more about how to effectively operate a P&L from Carol Taylor who was Finance Manager there. She was excellent but it was a baptism by fire. Then I got into the routine and the good controls were in place. When we got it right it was fantastic.
“For instance, we found it hard to make a profit out of the restaurant. We had used itison vouchers to fill the rooms (that was what you did at the time) and it sold the rooms but the voucher for dinner didn’t cover the cost of the food or staff. At the time Two Fat Ladies were operating the restaurant and it was too expensive for what we were getting. We had to change our model, so we did.”
Macdonald Cardrona and Golf Courses
Ironically the hotel group was then sold to Amaris, who also owns the Hilton Doubletree, but at that point, Andrew jumped as he says, “out of the frying pan and into the fire” and joined Macdonald Hotels as General Manager at Macdonald Cardrona.
He says, “I had never operated a hotel which had a golf course before, and golf courses are expensive to run. The maintenance is brutal. It was another learning curve. I was then offered what was technically a promotion to another Macdonald property, Forrest Hills, which honestly was the hardest hotel I’ve ever had to manage. It was remote and recruitment was really tough, you could never get your head above water. However, again I had a great team and we all bonded; we are still friends today.”
The Pandemic, Car Parks and the Maintenance Manager
Then he rejoined Amaris at the Doubletree Strathclyde. He says, “I had a great first year, and then Covid hit. To begin with, we didn’t know what to do. We had zero bookings, but we decided to stay open for key workers and slowly built the business up.
“We would do car park checks of the few other hotels that were open and write down the numbers from the vans that were parked and call them so they would stay with us and we slowly built the business.
“There were only ever two people on shift at one time, and we did 12-hour stretches. It was phenomenal and we got to know our customers well. For instance, I hadn’t worked on a front desk since 1998 – and had to learn it on my own – it was definitely trial and error.
“By the end the hotel was almost full most mid-week nights. We also had a Maintenance Manager who by the end of Covid was able to knock out 70/80 covers in the restaurant! We certainly learned how small you can make your business if you have to, and we learned the difference between essential and non-essential costs. Everyone chipped in.
“In hindsight, the pandemic was not as bad an experience for us as it could have been, but I certainly wouldn’t want to do it again.
“One of the highlights was phoning the team and telling them they were coming back to work but I had never experienced people being so happy to come back to work. As restrictions eased we were right back on it. The staffing issue was not as severe for us as for our colleagues in the wider industry because we had been open and hadn’t really let anyone go. By July we had 60% of staff back. Overall, the whole group did well because we stayed open.”
Eighteen months ago, after three and a half years at Strathclyde, Andrew got the opportunity to take over at the group’s Hilton Doubletree Central.
Hilton Doubletree Central
He smiles, “It is certainly the most exciting property that I have worked in. The ballroom offers a real opportunity to think big and come up with some cool events. The whole team is also amazing – they are experts at what they deliver. They rarely say no to anything.There was some anxiety in taking over such a successful hotel, but the opportunity to take it forward with a fresh set of eyes was really exciting.
“Everything in the past has brought the hotel to where it is today, the hotel runs really well and didn’t need major changes. To begin with it felt it was more important to listen rather than talk. We managed to move things forward with the opening of our new restaurant Cask & Clyde which we aim to promote as a standalone restaurant with its own entrance.
“Historically hotels concentrate more on the rooms with the restaurants being “secondary spend” but we are recruiting from F&B retailers such as TGI Friday’s – they have been trained differently and take a completely different approach to F&B than hoteliers do.
“The only element in our restaurant which we have kept the same is breakfast. We are trying to operate like retailers such as The Ivy and TGI’s and it is beginning to work. We are trying to dislocate the restaurant from the hotel in people’s minds. We want people to use the restaurant even if they are not staying in the hotel and we are doing things like putting on live music.”
It seems that Andrew’s laid-back approach to his new role has paid off because he reveals last year “was a record year.” Although the hotel excelled in 2023, Andrew is only too aware margins are being squeezed.
He explains, “Our costs have gone up but we can’t just put prices up, because we need the volume. What we have to do is get people to spend more money – have an extra coffee or two, and such like. That is one of the reasons we are investing in staff training. It is more important now than it has ever been.
“We also incentivise our team. We have a service charge and one hundred percent goes to staff. But we also reward for lots of different things, from trip advisor comments to people engaging in social media.”
He obviously enjoys hospitality and he believes that qualifications matter less if you have the right attitude and skill set. “I believe that qualifications matter less, you need to be bright but that takes many forms and you need to be able to count. There are countless examples of people who started as KPs and went on to be leaders of industry.
“If you are good and excel at one element of hospitality you will rise quickly and your skills will take you anywhere. You will have a job all your life, whether you are a good bartender, chef, waitress or people manager. The opportunity to travel is also massive as there are hotels everywhere in the world.
“It is a hard industry because the bulk of work is done in the evening and at weekends. You can’t get away from that, but that is when most people use hospitality. However, it is also very social and there are lots of opportunities and we showcase that more. Yes, there is an element of low pay, but only at the beginning, and you will always have a job.
“We get a good volume of applications, but it is harder to find the people that want to do it. We are lucky because we are a city property. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be in the more remote areas.”
Talking of being city centre property, I asked him if he thought the government was listening. “I think it is very unfortunate that the Scottish government decided not to replicate the rates relief that our English colleagues get.
“The late-night transport provision, in this city in particular, is also not great. We have to provide transport for all our team to get home after 11.30 pm. The new Glasgow parking charges and LEZ do not encourage people to come into the city centre. As for the work going on outside this hotel, it looks terrible, and the graffiti is not welcome either. It seems like there are all kinds of task forces and projects for this and that, but you wonder when and if we will see the results?”
Loving Glasgow
I asked him what his most memorable event of the last 18 months was and he admitted that he loved last year’s staff party which had an Ibiza theme. “I was thrilled because Judge Jules came and played.”
As for the maddest event… he admits, “There was a crazy week in December when we had a load of back-to-back events, and the hotel was full to the brim. We did a time-lapse video of the weekend, which really highlighted the work that goes into these events. We also had Rick Astley and Heather Small perform. It’s great looking back on it, everyone was exhausted after it, but it was phenomenal and something to be proud of.”
As for the future, he tells me, “I love living in Glasgow – I have been here 10 years, I am not considering moving, but never say never. It is nearly the longest I have lived anywhere.”
But his immediate priority is improving upon last year’s figures for the hotel. He concludes, “It’s onwards and upwards. I am always looking at how we can move business forward and build on last year’s success. We have to beat it. We can’t go backwards, that would be a sin!” It certainly would.
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