JOE GALLACHER took over at Mar Hall Golf & Spa Resort six months ago. Since then it has been all go. SUSAN YOUNG reports.
Mar Hall was the talk of the town at the end of last year when it was bought out of administration by the Dubai-based Dutco Group, supported by investment and asset management firm Align Partners.
In the months since, it has been full steam ahead as the new owners have embarked on a full-scale refurbishment, which they hope will be completed in the spring and which is expected to cost more than £15 million.
For General Manager , who took up his role at the start of the year, it was a homecoming. He comes from Old Kilpatrick, which is just over the water from the hotel, and still lives there. He smiles, “This is the perfect job for a local boy.”
I caught up with Joe at the hotel, in the midst of the refurbishment, and although it was the first time we had met, it was like talking to an old friend because to say we had few people in common would be an understatement. Not least the woman who got him into hospitality, Jeanette Montgomery.
Jeanette gave Joe his first job as a hall porter at the Stakis Pond Hotel, and coincidentally, she opened Mar Hall in 2002 and was its Operations Director for nearly a decade. Joe was a guest at her first event in charge of Mar Hall. He says, “It feels like I have come full circle. I’d love to see Monty and tell her.”
During Jeanette’s tenure at Mar Hall, the hotel enjoyed its glory days as she persuaded many of her guests, whom she had looked after when she was at Devonshire Gardens, to use Mar Hall.
These included the likes of Kylie Minogue, Take That, Katy Perry, Robbie Williams, Beyoncé, Coldplay, Oasis, and many more. Its exclusivity married with its close proximity to Glasgow’s music scene, just 20 minutes away, positioned the hotel as an ideal choice.
The hotel was also a firm favourite of footballers, and it remains so. On the day I caught up with Joe, the French side Lyon was in residence.
Today, Mar Hall is getting the love and attention it so needed after falling into some disrepair over the last few years. The restoration is a mammoth task. Says Joe, “The aim is to sympathetically restore the hotel, and create a luxury but quintessential Scottish hotel. We want to modernise but retain the heritage. That’s why we employed Graven and Jim Hamilton. We want to appeal to highend guests and local customers too, and Jim’s international experience of designing hotels is a great fit.”
It is never easy refurbishing a hotel that is still operational, but that is the task that he is navigating. Says Joe, “This is a Grade A listed building, and we have had to work with planners and Historic Scotland, but hopefully, we are winning hearts and souls and bringing people with us on the journey.”
“We have managed to get all our internal and external stakeholders on board.”
Joe is certainly relishing the challenge, but hospitality was not his first love – that was fitness. When he started his hospitality journey at the Stakis-owned Pond Hotel in Glasgow, Joe describes it as being like a local hotel management school.
He smiles, “The number of people who started there and are still in hospitality reads like a ‘who’s who of hospitality.’ People like Ian Boardley, Craig Gardiner, and Jeanette, to name but a few, who all went on to be names in the industry.”
Although starting out as a hall porter, his next move was to manage its leisure club. He says, “Fitness was always my passion, and I was in my element when I became the Leisure Club manager at the Pond.”
Joe reminisces, “We were one of Glasgow’s only health clubs and we had 1,000 members, and a renewal rate of 80%, which was very rare. Obviously, people liked it – and it was a busy place with a multi-gym right next to the pool – something that was completely unheard of at that time.”
When the Glasgow Hilton opened in 1999 and launched a LivingWell Health Club, he was a natural fit for the job as manager. Says Joe, “It was the first LivingWell health club in Scotland, and I was delighted when I was offered the role. It was Glasgow’s first five-star hotel, and here I was, a boy from Clydebank, meeting everyone from Billy Connolly to Princess Anne, and lots of the Glasgow business fraternity too.”
“It was also great to be part of the executive team there, and I got to see how they built up the whole hotel.”
Hilton started opening more health clubs, and five years later, moved Joe to the Hilton East Kilbride to manage the LivingWell there, which was undergoing a refurbishment. It was a four-star hotel with 100 rooms. Although in charge of the leisure club, which he took, over his five-year tenure, to a membership of 3,000, he also got into the field of hotel management.
He explains, “On occasion, when there was a management gap, I had to fill in for the hotel managers. I would, in effect, babysit the hotel until someone else was in situ. You could say that’s how I cut my teeth as a hotel manager. I really took to it, and the training at Hilton was good.”
Says Joe, “By 2005, I had worked my way up to being General Manager. In fact, I was the manager there when Maurice and Nicola Taylor, along with Robert Cook, purchased the hotel and rebranded it as a Holiday Inn. It was fascinating to see how you debrand a hotel and then rebrand it from Hilton to Holiday Inn.”
By that time, Joe had been there for six years and had worked for four owners, and he decided he needed a fresh challenge. In 2006, he made the move to Deer Park Golf & Country Club in Livingston.
Deer Park had a Championship Golf Course, a 16-lane ten-pin bowling centre, three restaurants, and four bars. It was also a large wedding venue, and Joe looked after it for four years. During that time, the owners of the resort tried and failed to get planning permission for a hotel. Therefore, when his former boss Bill Paisley, who was by that time working for Portland Hotels, approached him and suggested he had the perfect role for him – the post of General Manager at the Pond Hotel, which the group had purchased and had refurbished – Joe jumped at the opportunity.
He says, “It was like going full circle, returning to the hotel which had given me my start in hospitality.” Needless to say, Joe flourished there, and four years later, he was promoted to Director of Operations.
He says, “We had five hotels, two in Edinburgh, and one in Aberdeen, Perth, and Glasgow. It was a regional role, and it allowed me to travel. It may have been a bit nomadic, but I loved it.”
However, when Portland got an unsolicited approach from Leonardo Hotels, everything changed. Within six months, the group had been sold, and Joe had to look for another role. He took an interim role at Grand Central just prior to the appointment of Paul Bray joining Macdonald Hotels as a Cluster Manager.
It was at Macdonald Hotels that he met one of his good friends, Marcello Ventesi. Says Joe, “Marcello looked after the East, and I had the West. We got to know each other very well, as we shared similar experiences.”
“We are still constantly in touch and are good friends.”
He adds, “One of the good things about working for Macdonald was that it really hones your skills, and I certainly learned how to read a P&L.” After 18 months, Joe decided to step away and look after his father, who was ill, but he returned to the fray at the end of that year as General Manager at the DoubleTree by Hilton Glasgow Westerwood Spa & Golf Resort, where he stayed for four years.
Just prior to joining Mar Hall, he worked for a year for a private client, but he explains, “I missed the buzz of hotels.” The opportunity at Mar Hall came up, and Joe threw his hat in the ring. He tells me, “Obviously, because I live in Old Kilpatrick, I knew the hotel well, although I had not been in it for a few years.”
“When Align Asset Management bought the hotel in mid-December, I jumped at the opportunity. I knew it needed a lot of work. I could see that the hotel had the right backers in Dutco, and the right management, and I loved their vision for the hotel and the fact that we could start on the refurbishment straight away.”
“The vision includes being appealing to the five-star luxury market, but making it accessible to the local market too. That will be key to the success of the hotel. We want people to mention it in the same breath as other well-known five-star hotels in Scotland.”
When I visited the hotel, Joe gave me a tour, and you could see the amount of work that was going on, and also the work that had already been completed. Joe painted a picture for me of the new reception area, which, when it reopens, will come complete with palm trees and an informal layout. This will lead into the Grand Hall, which will have a central bar.
There will also be a new restaurant and a members’ lounger. This work is expected to be finished in time for Christmas, with the full hotel refurbishment completed by Spring 2025. It is certainly impressive. But more pressing is the challenge of running the hotel in the midst of the refurbishment.
Says Joe, “It can be challenging. We strive to deliver better every day, focusing on consistent improvement over perfection.”
He continues, “All our public areas are being transformed, and every bedroom and suite too. We are aiming to bring the hotel back to its halcyon days and, in fact, make it better than that. Mar Hall is like a phoenix rising from the ashes.”
Joe and the team at Mar Hall are working closely with Rhino Construction Group, who are specialists in high-quality hospitality projects, on this transformative development, bringing expertise in efficient, live-environment builds to elevate the resort’s offering.
The owners have also just secured planning permission to develop 30 luxurious woodland lodges, which should also be completed next spring. This will add another 48 rooms to its existing 70.
Joe’s experience running golf courses – Deerpark and Westerwood – has also proved to be beneficial. Already, the bunkers have been reinstated on its golf course, a new irrigation system has been installed, and a new greenkeeping team is now on board.
Joe took me around the gardens to see the progress there too. Their landscaper and botanist has brought the hotel’s rose gardens back, the old fountain is now working after being redundant for 20 years, and sunken firepit areas have been created.
Its flower beds are being cultivated, and a kitchen garden for the chef is being created. There is also a pagoda planned and a BBQ area. Joe adds, “The Mar estate covers some 240 acres, and we are having lots of discussions regarding making the best use of it. We’ve also talked about incorporating livestock into our plans.”
“The hotel also has 50 acres of woodland. This may allow us to create bike trails. We already provide guests with bikes, and it seems like a natural progression.”
They have announced a partnership with 4×4 Adventures to offer guests an off-road adventure, and there is pony trekking too. Says Joe, “The hotel’s helipad is currently being relocated, and we are looking at lots of things – from moorings on the Clyde to a seaplane. The good news is that our guests are making use of the new experiences we are already offering, and we are open to new ideas.”
Unsurprisingly, Joe finished off the tour with a visit to the hotel’s leisure and spa. A few months ago, the refurbished leisure suite was unveiled. The improvements included a state-of-the-art gym, alongside a 20-metre swimming pool with saunas, steam rooms, relaxation space, and an outdoor thermal suite.
But there will also be further improvements in the months ahead with a new spa wing, which will include a full outside thermal area, a glass balustrade to make the most of the view, and a new indoor and outdoor pool, a cool plunge pool, and more.
Mar Hall really is the perfect role for Joe. He has managed to combine his love of sport with his passion for hospitality. He may have a lot on his plate, but he is not only up for the challenge but relishing it. He has certainly come a long way from his hall porter job at the Pond. I am sure Monty will be along in the spring to see how he is getting on and to see the new look Mar Hall in all its glory