Guy Crawford has travelled the world and now he is bringing his expertise to Highland Coast Hotels. Susan Young reports.
Guy Crawford, CEO of Highland Coast Hotels, and I have been trying to catch up for a few months and we succeeded in co-ordinating our diaries last month and met up at the group’s latest purchase Lochardil House in Inverness on a beautiful sunny day.
Guy was impeccably turned out in a three piece tweed suit but you only had to look at his wrist, which is adorned with a variety of bracelets, to recognise that he is actually a bit of a maverick at heart, and incredibly well travelled too.
He took on the role of CEO of Highland Coast Hotels last year, coming out of retirement to take the mantle. The Scottish hotel group, which was created in April 2021, now has seven hotels including the award winning Kylesku Hotel in Sutherland; Newton Lodge, at Loch Glencoul; Tongue Hotel, overlooking the Kyle of Tongue; Plockton Inn, overlooking Loch Carron; Royal Golf Hotel, Dornoch, and the Royal Marine Hotel, Brora.
The appointment also meant a return to the land of his birth. Guy’s grandparents and parents were hotel owners and managers in the Scottish Highlands, and had venues in Forres, Nairn, Grantown-on-Spey, Aviemore and Craigellachie. While his wife Elizabeth is originally from Barra in the Western Isles and he tells me she adores being in Inverness.
“I got a telephone call and was asked ‘Would you like to come back to Scotland?”
However Guy enjoyed France, where they had lived until the telephone call came luring them to Scotland. He says, “I didn’t really have any desire to come back. We had retired to the South of France where I had a vineyard – Domaine de La Senche – and had been there for eight years and I had got used to wearing a t-shirt and a pair of flip flops and sitting looking out over the valley.
“I got a telephone call and was asked ‘Would you like to come back to Scotland? The answer was ‘No’. Then they said, “Would you like to come back and help a small Highland hotel company that is struggling to make a profit and make it a sustainable business’ and I said ‘yes’.
I promised to come over, work with Highland Coast Hotels for a period, and do my best to add value and ensure its sustainability. I’ve now been here 18 months and I love it.”
Before retiring at 60 to run his vineyard with Elizabeth, Guy had an impeccable pedigree in hospitality. He is a former CEO and board member of Jumeirah Hospitality Group in Dubai and is a former Managing Director of Forte Heritage Hotels. He was the Managing Director of Le Meridien Africa, Caribbean and Indian Ocean.
“I have never wanted to do anything else but hospitality”
He ran some of the world’s most exclusive luxury hotels, as well as being nonexecutive board member of the Indian Hotels Company, Taj Group; Lausanne Hotel School in Switzerland; and Emirates Hotel Academy in the United Arab Emirates. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality and one of the first members of the Global Scots international business network.
But as Guy explains hospitality was in his blood. “I was born in Forres and my mum ran and owned the Park hotel there. My grandparents ran the Craigellachie and they also ran the first Strathspey Hotel in Grantown on Spey, while my dad and mother had the joint management contract to run the Strathspey hotel in Aviemore and my gran owned the Clifton Hotel in Nairn.
“I have never wanted to do anything else but hospitality and I have been incredibly lucky. I have run some of the most luxurious and most beautiful hotels in the world. But for me it is all about the people – it is a people industry – and we employ nice people and I have never regretted a single day.”
Guy started out his illustrious career with British Transport Hotels at The Caledonian in Edinburgh as a management trainee. He says, “Back then the trainees were the dogsbodies. We did everything including cleaning the stoves and I still can’t eat Brussel Sprouts to this day because that’s all I prepared for two months in the kitchen.
“Thankfully we have moved on a long way since then. People are better paid and better treated, and so they should be.” He continues, “I was part of the first collection of trainees that BTH took out of hotels and educated at Westminster College (now university), then we did a financial management course at Surrey University.
“We were the first set of trainees to be taught the importance of making enough money for the business to be sustainable. In hotels if you don’t understand your numbers it doesn’t work.
“If you didn’t know that number your career at Forte would be short lived”
“Years later when I was lucky enough to work for the Forte Family running the Beach Plaza in Monte Carlo, Charles Forte used to come out and stay and if he saw you walking through the hotel he would ask you what your financial forecast was like last week – and if you didn’t know that number your career at Forte would be short lived.
“Contrary to that when I ran the Jumeirah Group, which was owned by the Dubai Government, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum never talked to us about money, but about whether our customers were happy. He would say to me, “I am going for a walk to the Jumeirah Beach Hotel or Jumeirah Madinat, but don’t come with me and don’t send a manager around. Let me go and speak to the guests. That was just as much pressure as knowing your numbers.”
But it was knowing his numbers that set Guy off on his international travels. In 1979 in a bid to earn more, he decided to see if he could make his fortune abroad and he applied for a job with Trust House Forte International and his first posting was to Guyana in South America and his girlfriend, Elizabeth, went with him.
“Some customers would pay with gold nuggets”
That first posting led to Guy living and working in 14 countries and visiting and working in a further 146 countries during his well-travelled 50 year career. Of Guyana Guy recalls, “Guyana was a communist country at the time and we had no menus because you never knew what products would be available on a day to day basis. It just depended on what the chef managed to find in the market.
“It was the same with drinks, sometimes we would serve rum and coke and the next day it would be rum and ginger beer. Some customers would pay with gold nuggets which they had just dug up. It was a very enjoyable period and I have lots of good memories including the fact I got married there.”
In 1982 Forte rewarded Guy for his efforts in Guyana with a move to Monte Carlo. Guy explains, “Monte Carlo was the total opposite of Guyana. At that time if you managed a difficult hotel with the Forte organisation they would say ‘do a couple of years there and we give you a nicer hotel next’, and Guyana to Monte Carlo fitted that criteria.
“Monte Carlo was great fun”
“Monte Carlo was great fun. As you would imagine it was really glamourous. When the Red Cross Ball was on you couldn’t count the Rolls Royce’s driving past the hotel. We also had functions out on the hotel’s private beach. I remember one customer, a Countess, who hired two helicopters to drop rose petals on her guests at the beach.”
“I learned to look after very wealthy guests there and 99% of the time they were lovely. In my experience it is sometimes the people around them that are not so nice at times. But it takes a lot of people to make a world.”
The next country on his card was the Bahamas and the Nassau Beach Hotel. During his time there he became a father for the first time. It was also his first experience of the American market.
“The tourism levy here could be a real opportunity”
By this time he was looking after 400 rooms and 800 guests. Says Guy, “When I worked in the Bahamas the hotel association there had real power. The Government listened to them. We had a tourism levy and we spent the money on tourism initiatives.
“For instance, we would build places for people with motorhomes to empty their trash, and to park up so they didn’t have to stay in lay-bys!
“I believe the tourism levy here could be a real opportunity to fund tourism initiatives – we know that councils and the government need money. We don’t really, as an industry, need any more costs, but if they are going to do it they should make it easy for the customer to understand.
“Having a different levy in different council areas is going to leave tourists very confused. It should be the same percentage across the country.”
Over the ensuing years he worked in many places including Bermuda and Casablanca. Guy returned to the UK and to the Balmoral in Edinburgh before taking on the role as MD of Forte Heritage Hotels looking after Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts, a role which he did for 23 years.
“We sold Scotland”
But while at the Balmoral he recalls trade visits to the US when hoteliers from prestige hotels across Scotland came together to represent Scotland. “I was a member of Connoissuer Scotland and the MDs of the best of Scotland’s hotels would go to American, people like Ken McCulloch and Peter Lederer, but we didn’t take hotel brochures – we sold Scotland.
“We all got to know each other well. Ken used to say the secret of his success was that he would employ nice people and train them. We would be at the Beverly Hills hotel in California hosting a dinner for 250 Platinum card holders and Ken would go round the room checking every napkin was the right space away from the cutlery. He was all about attention to detail, while Peter Lederer excelled at building teams.”
He himself admits that he trained the old school way. He says, “I was taught to put glasses on the table upside down and turn them up when the restaurant opened”, and he reveals his habit of asking staff to see their hands before they go and serve customers.
Says Guy, “I’ve done that for most of my professional life. The hotels I have worked in were luxury hotels and everything needed to be perfect including their servers hands. We also put mirrors in staff rooms so that staff could check that they were respectable before they went in front of customers.”
In 2002 he headed to Dubai to take up the role of CEO of the Jumeirah Group / Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts – he stayed there for 11 years, and loved every minute.
“It had 1000 rooms, 45 restaurants, a sit down conference and banqueting facility”
He says, “I remember when I thought a 20-room hotel was a big hotel, but the last hotel in my portfolio was The Madinat in Dubai. It had 1000 rooms, 45 restaurants, a sit down conference and banqueting facility for 7500, and 15,000 employees.
“I met every single one of them. Once every three weeks I met every new employee – we would welcome them to the company and explain what the company believed in and this is something that I am trying to do here too.
“We may only have around 200 employees (250 in the season) but it is important that we meet them and let know them what we believe in.”
“At Highland Hotels we are about the community and when we talk about wanting to be involved in communities, we really do. If you run a 25 bedroom hotel in Kylesku or Brora you need to get to know the locals. If they don’t talk about you in a positive way you are not being successful. They are also our customers.”
“We are sometimes perceived as a corporate company”
“I think we are sometimes perceived as a corporate company taking hotels from independent owners. However, some of these hotels were not making a profit. I like to think of us as a collection of individual hotels giving individual service, but with the benefits of scale, so that we can make some money.
“We have accomplished the first bit and are well on the way to the second bit. We have taken over these beautiful little hotels and our objective is to ensure that these hotels are financially sustainable.
“That is the biggest reason I came back to make these hotels work. I believe we do need to keep investing in them, and investing in our people.”
“The importance of investing in people training cannot be underestimated. I like to think we don’t just talk, but we also walk the walk. I have promised everyone that works for me an ‘emba’ day in November, we did the same in Dubai.
“This is a day that everyone in the business takes on a different role for the day. For instance in Dubai I was a pool attendant for a day – I always thought it was quite an easy role.
“It was a more difficult job than I thought”
“But our rule was that you had to notice someone in distress within 10 seconds and get to them in 20 – the degree of concentration and the 40 degree heat meant we had to switch people every 30 mins. It was a more difficult job than I thought.
“I also did a stint as a beach boy in our beach club. I had to walk 500 yards through hot sand to take the order, then walk back to the bar to place it, before walking back to that person who ordered the drinks. I quickly invested in getting the ordering done more efficiently!”
“Once when I was with Heritage hotel at Leeming House and Spa in the Lake District, I instigated an automated till system which meant if a customer took something out the fridge the till automatically recorded it. I was pleased with myself until I went to work as a breakfast waiter there for the day.
“…some stupid idiot in head office (me)”
“The staff didn’t know who I was. I came down for the breakfast shift and was being told how to take an order and this waitress said to me, “you have to use these pads now to take the order because some stupid idiot in head office (me) has put these automatic tills in.”
She explained, “I used to be able to go to a table of four and would identify the diners e.g. the man with the bow tie would have BT beside his order and so on, so that when I brought the food back I didn’t need to ask who was having what.”
Needless to say I amended the till system so she could keep identifying people. That’s my philosophy – take the start point and work your way around it.
“That’s what I am doing here. I like to put ourselves in our customers, and colleagues, shoes. That’s what I mean by walk the walk. If I can do it in a 1000 bedroom hotel I can do it in a little one.”
He also believes that more can, and should be done, to represent jobs in hospitality in a better light. “In my view a lot of the preconceptions of the industry has been driven by the media’s presentation of the kitchen – the swearing and the misogyny – in reality that doesn’t happen. Most of the time chefs do behave properly.
“Good chefs are like hens teeth”
“Good chefs are like hens teeth and finding a Chef de Partie is just about impossible. We want to serve good food in our venues, we don’t need posh sounding menus and we do try to respect our customers some of whom want haggis and chips while others want fresh Langoustine and are prepared to pay extra for it. But we need the staff to do this.
“It is not just chefs jobs we need to shout about but all the opportunities this industry has to offer. You can do IT, you can do mechanical engineering, digital marketing, web designer, we also have lawyers and accountants – all of these roles exist within hospitality too.”
On the subject of room rates he also has a view, “We still have the opportunity to offer more value for customers although I do think we have to watch our rates – they are starting to rise and are high. I want our customers to leave our hotels not thinking that was expensive but that that was an okay price because I had a lovely breakfast and a lovely dinner in a beautiful location with great service.”
“We are now getting customers from Edinburgh”
“We are now getting customers from Edinburgh because the perception is that it is getting too expensive there. Here our average rate is on average north of £200 – then there will be dinner on top. So it is working out at £300 for an overnight in Inverness. I do think we have to be careful and recognise people have choice. So we watch our stats – our heat map – like a hawk, to see any trends.”
“I do think Highland Hotels is a positive story. We may be tiny, but we now have seven hotels with 250 rooms turning over £10m, but it is harder to make money out of eight smaller hotels than one big hotel.
“However, we are slowly and surely growing and lengthening our seasons too and once we get into the height of summer we will be employing more than 250 people. I am 100% certain that major shareholders and investors do want a return but it is a reasonable return – not the return you would get out of Edinburgh, or in bigger hotels, or indeed in Dubai – but they will want a return on their investment.”
“Customers also want to know we are operating with due regard for sustainability”
“I keep talking about sustainability when it comes to the business but it also applies to the environment, particularly because of where our hotels are located. I don’t think my children would have been happy for me to work for a company like Highland Hotels if it didn’t have some respect for the environment. Customers also want to know we are operating with due regard for sustainability. When customers stay at Kylesku they can see the amazing vista in front of them and they do not want us to be abusing that!”
“As a result we are doing our best. We have put electric kitchens in Plockton and Tongue, and EV chargers in for cars, we also try to use local where we can.
“As we replace our boilers they will also be green – we can’t afford to replace every boiler straight away, but when we do it they will be 100% more efficient than they are today.”
We could have talked all day – Guy has enough stories to fill a book and in fact he may write one when he does eventually retire.
He says, “My kids say, dad you are 72 when are you going to take it easy? But I am still loving what I do. When I do retire I think I will write a book.” I can’t wait!