Hotel operator Resident Hotels, who will open the 164-room The Resident Edinburgh this summer, have appointed Gillian Mylles as General Manager.
The Resident Edinburgh will be the sixth branded hotel within the group’s portfolio and follows the £50m redevelopment of the 1960’s office building Meldrum House, formerly home to HMS Revenue & Customs on Drumsheugh Gardens. Other Residents include The Resident Covent Garden, The Resident Liverpool and The Resident Kensington.
Gillian’s experience spans leading hotel groups in the UK, including Malmaison, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants and InterContinental, with a focus on Edinburgh.
David JM Orr, CEO, Resident Hotels, said, “We are privileged to have appointed someone of Gillian’s calibre, who brings with her great talent, a track record of developing her teams setting them up to succeed, all with a calm professionalism that will quickly establish The Resident Edinburgh as one of the most sought-after, well-regarded hotels in the city.
“I look forward to Gillian thriving within our culture and with exceptional knowledge of the city that is her home.”
Gillian added, “The Resident brand has a very good reputation on Tripadvisor – and in the wider industry – because of its team. My first CEO said to me, ‘people work for people’ and I truly believe that, as long as we make our team happy, the guests will follow.’’
“The Resident Edinburgh will be a strong addition to Edinburgh’s close-knit hotel community and has been designed with a real focus on guest experience. There are a lot of thoughtful touches, such as somewhere to hang your umbrella on one of Scotland’s rainy days, as well as a spectacular view of the city skyline when it clears.’’
“I am particularly proud to be working in a hotel with such a dedicated sustainability policy, from the development up. The sector needs to focus more on the issue and it’s something more and more visitors are looking for when they’re visiting hotels.”
Resident Hotels are operating the Upper Upscale hotel, developed with owners Mactaggart Family & Partners who appointed MLA as Architects to the project team, as well as Arup, who worked on structural solutions to reduce the embodied carbon emissions. Arup delivered a solution that, for the first time in a UK hotel project, recycled the existing glass from the building’s façade, returning 10 tonnes of glass to manufacturer, NSG Pilkington – saving 12 tonnes of virgin raw materials and more than 5 tonnes of CO2 emissions that would have been used during the manufacture of new glass.
Graeme DeBrincat at Arup said, “Encouraged by the owners and developer, The Resident Hotel Edinburgh project has become our most recent example of closing the loop in the circular supply chain of architectural glass. The project demonstrates that reclaiming materials from existing buildings using new and novel approaches can provide valuable materials to support the decarbonisation of our construction material industries.’’
The brand has plans to add rooms through management contracts as well as developments, with a target of 1,500 rooms over the next five years.