Anna-Marie Dowling is the new general manager of The Guoman Royal Horseguards, which received London Hotel of the Year at the AA Hospitality Awards 2010 – 2011. The 281-room grade I listed hotel overlooks the River Thames, and was originally built in 1884 in the style of a French château.
What is your understanding of why the hotel won the recent award?
I’ve only been here for a short time, so I think it is a recognition and a great accolade for all the hard work of the staff before I got here, and also because of the significant level of investment that has been made into this property. Over the years The Royal Horseguards has seen some investment, and there has been a patchwork of areas which have been invested in and others areas that weren’t. The great thing Guoman has done is come in and brought all the rooms up to a five star deluxe standard. We are now in the process of bringing all of the ground floor up to that level with a new bar, new lounge and new restaurant. But without doubt the team have done a great job of bringing their service standards up to five star.
Is it the same team who brought it up from four to five stars?
Yes, there’s a maturity in the team here that comes of having worked closely together. I took the Grand Hotel in Jersey though a similar experience, and it really creates a team spirit when you collectively decide to bring a four star hotel up to a five star. It’s a big step change in terms of expectations both from customers and owners alike. The product is definitely a big part of that, there’s a level of investment to bring the hotel up to a standard that customers expect, but service consistency is everything and you have to prove you can deliver that standard of service every day.
You are new to the company, but what is your understanding of the Guoman brand?
I think there is a wish to present Guoman as a very different brand to Thistle, which is a branded three to four star hotel. Guoman is about offering a unique experience and embracing the heritage of the individual hotels. It is not a cookie cutter approach. There is a personality to each hotel which will be very individual. What’s great about Guoman is that it’s very embryonic so you can get involved in defining that brand. There will be lots of work over the 18 months so that customers can understand what the brand offers and I find it very exciting after many years of service with Marriott and Starwood. With those companies they wanted their customers to understand that wherever a hotel is in the world there is a certain level of consistency you will find in every hotel. Guoman will have certain levels of consistency in terms of product, but the personality and the concept of each hotel will be very different.
What’s unique about The Horseguards?
It’s a unique building for a start. It is attached to One Whitehall Place, which has lots of potential with the well preserved Victorian heritage of the building and the history such as the National Liberal Club, but it is a venue in its own right. I used to run the Meridien Piccadilly and the Cafe Royal, so it’s similar to that in the sense that the venue can add value to the hotel but it has a positioning in itself. The two businesses complement one another and we run them all as one business. It adds to our food and beverage revenue, and so as a total of our revenue yesterday might be 60% rooms and 40% food and beverage, but like a lot of London venues, the business isn’t necessarily residential. It’s just a London-based event, with the people attending maybe coming from the London area, or maybe not but not staying with us anyway. Just because One Whitehall Place is full doesn’t mean they are all staying at the Horseguards, obviously. We aren’t the sort of hotel to have coaches pulling up outside. Horseguards is not a big group hotel. We only have 281 rooms with three main categories: deluxe, mainly the inland rooms, then executive rooms, which are larger and have a shower and bath, and then the river view execs, and then four or five suites.
So the renovations have finished?
For the rooms, yes. We have just started the ground floor renovations, and we will be repositioning the food and beverage up to the upper four star deluxe and aim towards a Michelin-style standard. What they had before was fine but not exceptional. We are building a new bar which opens at the beginning of November, and then we will change the existing restaurant and bar to open towards the end of February. It will change the whole feel and look of the hotel. We don’t have a big spa or swimming pool or a fitness area. There’s a lot of space down in the basement area and we are just about to undertake a feasibility study of it. A spa is undoubtedly a trigger to buy, but lots of people come to the city because there is lots happening in the city, so we have lots of potential without those facilities but it would be the icing on the cake.
Will the guest profile change?
Whenever a hotel moves from four to five star there has to be a transition in the client base. It’s never an overnight journey and it can take 18 months to two years to show this as an upper five star deluxe market. When we achieve that the hotel will be up against the [Hyatt] Churchill, the [Jumeirah] Carlton Tower, the Langham, the Landmark, moving away from the five star branded hotels such as the Hiltons, Marriotts and Starwoods.
We need to do some work on the revenue per available room (RevPAR) because obviously you don’t invest nearly £20 million into a hotel for the customer to expect their rate to be the same. With corporates you can’t shock them by racking their rate up in all the year but it’s true we are now pricing out of their price range. In addition, we are looking much more at the US market which is something that we have previously not had in abundance, but Guoman has quite a large sales force in the UK who are looking to increase our UK inbound business. At the moment it seems to be about 60% business customers and 40% leisure.
Do you think the Guoman brand will help that process?
That’s the work we need to do to get the brand more established in the UK. Every brand has to go through that. We are still at the embryonic stage and we need to go through the process of developing it and the customer awareness of it. That’s the task and what I find exciting about it.