Country
Thornbury Castle
Thornbury, Gloucestershire BS12 1HH
Tel: 01454 281182
Proprietor: Maurice Taylor, Baron of Portlethen
Managing director: Justin Taylor
Number of rooms: 20
Rack rate (January and February rates in brackets): singles, £105; doubles, £170 (£135); four-poster, £200 (£170); de luxe, £245; Portlethen suite, £350
Average achieved room rate: £143
Annual average occupancy: 60%
A GUEST looking at Thornbury Castle hotel from the garden will see few of the trappings of the typical 1990s country house hotel. There's no new wing boasting a conference centre to detract from the 16th-century battlements. Nor is there a health spa or conservatory brasserie. And instead of a golf course there's a croquet lawn.
To country house hoteliers who are busily adding facilities to win today's demanding customer, this probably sounds like business suicide. But Justin Taylor, managing director of the 20-bedroom Thornbury Castle, takes a different view. In his opinion, the diversification of many country house hotels eases the competition for his Gloucestershire property. Compared with the heyday of the 1980s, he now sees himself vying for business in a much smaller pool of niche "restaurant with rooms"-style hotels, such as Gravetye Manor in East Grinstead, East Sussex. "I believe there is a future for the last few country house hotels left in the UK. It's a win-win situation," he says.
Evidently, Thornbury Castle is not losing. In the 10 years since Taylor's father, the Baron of Portlethen, bought the hotel for £1m, turnover has increased by roughly £100,000 a year. Last year's aim was to turn over £1.35m; the achieved sum was £1.45m.
That said, Taylor's target this year is a conservative £1.48m - a reaction to signs he's noted of an economic slowdown. The hotel's turnover for the first two months of this year compared with 1998 was £3,000 under budget, which he puts down to "people feeling less frivolous".
In any case, at the best of times the hotel is difficult to fill in winter. Rack rate is routinely reduced in January and February to attract business. For instance, £170 for a double room is slashed to £135, and a four-poster room at £200 is cut to £170. Outside these months, however, discounting is unusual. Taylor tries not to sell rooms for less than the minimum rate, which in high season starts at £105 for a single room, rising to £395 for the Portlethen suite, pushing average achieved room rate up to £143 net of VAT. However, there is a policy of upgrading guests if a better room is free.
Taylor concedes that the winter lull could be alleviated if the hotel had conference or health spa facilities. But, as well as reiterating his view that there is a market for hotels such as Thornbury, he adds that the hotel would need more than its 20 bedrooms to sustain such development. He also questions whether country house hotels can please two such diverse markets as conference and leisure - "the New Yorkers wanting a bit of old England and the IBM crowd wanting business facilities", as he describes it.
At Thornbury, Taylor therefore concentrates on the leisure market, which accounts for vigorous trade during the summer and, indeed, 80% of guests over the year.
That said, Taylor says Thornbury has tapped into a demand for small boardroom meetings, making use of its 14-seat meeting room and the option of adapting one of the three dining rooms as a 30-seat venue. It's low-key, with perhaps one meeting a week, but demand is growing for business lunches and dinners, which often lead to room nights.
Without conference or leisure facilities, Taylor relies heavily on the restaurant. More than 50% of revenue is from food and beverage, and about 98% of hotel guests dine in. There is also a healthy local trade, with diners coming from Bristol, a 20-minute drive away, and Bath, 45 minutes away.
The restaurant has three rooms, seating a maximum of 60 diners. About 15-20 covers are served at lunchtime, rising to 30 for dinner, at which guests choose from the set three-course menu priced at £39.50. The dishes, which change daily, include starters such as lobster bisque flavoured and gratinated with potato a‹oli and brandy cream, and main courses such as chicken with ginger, lemon grass, crunchy potatoes and a spiced tomato fondue.
To maximise the use of the restaurant, Thornbury also has a wedding licence, which it has held since 1995, and weddings now account for 10% of business: 74 are booked this year. However, as there are no separate function rooms, weddings are held in one of the dining rooms, which limits the number of guests to 30.
Maintaining a tranquil country house atmosphere is important to Taylor, since that and the historic castle are what he is selling. It's a combination that attracts overseas visitors, about 42% of whom are from the USA.
Taylor is half-Canadian and has lived in North America, so he is in tune with the cultural problems of US travellers. He realises, for instance, that when Americans are asked if they would like a drink in the library before dinner, they assume it's a delaying tactic. They don't realise that the point is to choose what they will eat while sitting in an antique-filled room with log fires. So, to avoid having to spell out what the country house experience is, Taylor removes their choice and simply seats them in the library.
Facilities or no facilities, Taylor has proof he's hitting the spot. The hotel has three AA red rosettes and an RAC Blue Ribbon award, and recently it came top of the European section in the Gold list of the world's top 500 hotels in Condé Nast's US Traveler magazine. The accolade was awarded on the basis of rooms, style and comfort.
General manager Brian Jarvis has yet to analyse how much business has come from the accolade, but he says that the phones have been hot with bookings ever since. It has also had a knock-on effect at home, where the local press picked up on the story. Taylor is pleased by this but cynical about some of the ratings. "If we had 40 bedrooms, we'd be five-star. We dropped out of the Crown system because we would have had fewer crowns than a [budget] hotel" - all the more remarkable when Taylor points out his helipad.
The marketing budget is £40,000, and a large portion is set aside for membership of Pride of Britain. The hotel is also featured in Best Loved Hotels, a marketing tool that Taylor launched in 1993 (and recently sold on to his partner, Geoffrey Epstein). He does not underestimate the effectiveness of guides, and is pleased to note that he still gets bookings five years after pulling out of Johansens, because people keep it for reference as a coffee table-style book.
The cost of running an ancient building is high. Repairs and renewals alone slice £60,000 off the annual turnover, while the bill for developing two rooms in a disused part of the building last year came to £270,000. Equally, service and maintenance of the hotel and grounds, including a vineyard, mean it requires a large number of staff - 68 - most of whom are part-time. Their wages add up to 32% of turnover.
In Taylor's book, it's money well spent. Apart from being the backbone of the business, the Tudor castle is also the family home - another reason why he is holding out against the modern spectre of conference rooms, health spas and golf courses. n
