In the top corner of Exeter's cathedral square is a quintessentially British scene. Holiday crowds are here for the Trafalgar Day celebrations, some dressed in shorts and T-shirts, others - glorious against the cobbles - got up in festival costumes of bonnets, naval hats and tailcoats shiny with big brass buttons.
The hospitality business in that particular spot is in equally resplendent mood. My destination, the Royal Clarence hotel, reportedly the first hotel in the UK to be called a hotel, looks charming: wrought-iron Regency-era balconies and not-quite-uniform windows - all modest pomp and provincial grandeur. Next door a contemporary-styled caf-bar has several tables outside, with young groups enjoying the best of the afternoon sun. On the other side the Well House Tavern is already gathering in its own share of punters. It's a picture to warm the heart of anyone involved in the industry.
However, it is also a picture that will soon have those hearts filled with envy - and, in a crowded hotels market, a significant degree of fear. Though you wouldn't guess it from the outside - and that is the point - these three businesses are in fact one business. They form the blueprint for a new brand of city- and town-centre hotel from chef-turned-restaurateur-turned-hotelier Michael Caines and his business partner, Andrew Brownsword.
The brand, ABode, launches this week. Its mission is to open 15 hotels under the same banner within five years, in some of the country's most historical destinations - such as Exeter - or in some of its most vibrant - like the second project, the Arthouse hotel in Glasgow. Canterbury, meanwhile, will be the home of the third, the County hotel. Another city or town will be added to the stable before Christmas.
It is an aggressive expansion policy that quite clearly pits the chain against the likes of Alias or the now-combined might of Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, and Caines, perennially positive, is in bullish spirits.
"We thought: why be called something French to describe the future of hotels in Britain?" Caines says. The future of hotels, no less. Quite a claim, but from the intent in his eyes and the fervour he works himself up into describing the project, you know this isn't just posturing.
"We don't want to just be a hotel brand," he says. "We want to be people's first-choice destination. We want to change the way the industry treats its staff. We want to change the image of hospitality."
No wonder the excitement. This is the culmination of a plan that has been bubbling away in Caines's mind for five years. Not content with achieving two Michelin stars at Gidleigh Park in Devon (which, if you did not know already, Brownsword now owns), Caines took a step further towards hotels with his restaurant brand, Michael Caines Restaurants, which started running the food and beverage at the Royal Clarence hotel in late 2000. The same brand also runs the fine dining-offer at the Marriott Hotel in Bristol.
An increasing disparity, however, between what guests were experiencing upstairs at the Clarence and what was on offer downstairs started to bug Caines. Although the hotel's turnover was £900,000, the restaurant's was closer to £2m. While the hotel was achieving only about £55 average room rate, restaurant diners could be paying the same again per head on a meal in the restaurant. It was obvious the restaurant and hotel were catering for two different markets; indeed, only 25% of the restaurant's custom came from the hotel.
He was also getting frustrated with paying rent. "Ultimately, paying so much rent here, we nearly failed," he says. "We had no asset. There is no future in just renting." (Perhaps tellingly, at this point, Caines does not want to discuss what the future holds for his contract at the Bristol Marriott.)
What Caines needed was investment to maximise the potential he imagined, and it arrived in September 2003. Brownsword, who already owned the Bath Priory hotel and the Sydney, a townhouse hotel in London's Chelsea, had made his fortune from Hallmark greetings cards.
When he came to eat at the Michael Caines restaurant at the Clarence he asked to meet the chef. "Andrew said he would give me a call," Caines says. "I thought it would probably be just another job offer - but it turned out he wanted to buy the hotel."
The pair instantly clicked. Caines had a vision for a series of hotels that would offer an affordable boutique experience, complete with the kind of food and beverage offer he himself, as a Michelin-starred chef, would be proud of. The brand would combine old-fashioned values (there will be a doorman, known as an Oscar, at every hotel, for example) with a 21st-century feel (state-of-the-art meeting facilities, say). Brownsword wanted to invest heavily and was willing to provide the capital outlay for a major new brand.
The 53-bedroom Clarence is the perfect flagship for that shared vision. Exeter is a beautiful city, especially the area around the Clarence, with a strong historical appeal. Though not overly grand in scale, the Clarence also has a charming character all of its own, vital to the ABode brand. Brownsword and Caines want to regenerate properties (none expected to be larger than about 120 bedrooms) that already have their own style, making the most of their own individuality while marketing them nationwide as an ABode.
Accordingly the Clarence's light fittings have been retained and its warren-like corridors left be, to continue the old-world feel. But both have been scrubbed up with a more contemporary colour scheme. The hotel's Clarence Room (capacity 80 for sit-down dinner), however, has been restored accurately to Regency splendour with the help of Farrow and Ball historical paints. On the far wall an original mace stand hangs triumphant. Though not originally from the hotel, the antique was brought by Brownsword in Exeter, and is exactly the kind that visiting Royalty would use - literally, to put their maces in - when they arrived at the hotel. It is the type of historical detail that raises the hotel above the preconceptions of what a branded operation should be like.
By contrast, the Arthouse in Glasgow will have a much more modern feel. Room numbers will appear in the carpets (spotlit from above) and the hotel will target the younger urban crowd with its proposed Vibe Bar - a cocktail and DJ bar which, though a far cry from the Champagne bar at the Clarence, is much closer to the younger clientele's vision of an exclusive city-centre hangout.
"We want to be flexible and do variations around what we have already," says John Crompton, the group's food and beverage development manager. "People will not necessarily know the Vibe Bar is part of the hotel, but that is not something we will be ashamed of."
Caines, of course, gets his own chance to shine with the food and beverage offer. In many ways this will be the new brand's trump card. All the outlets, be it the pubs (Michael Caines Taverns), the fine-dining offers (Michael Caines Restaurants) or the more mid-market offer (Michael Caines Caf Bars) come under his control. Each hotel may have a branch of all three, or just two, depending on what is suitable for the site, with the business plan expecting more than 60% of total turnover to come through F&B. Taking into account the fact that ABode plans to rival the market in terms of room rates, that proportion means the F&B offer is expected to outperform its competitors. It's easy to see it working.
At the Clarence the Café Bar currently serves about 350 covers a day, going up to 600 on a Saturday. It's a low-cost (average spend is only £6 or £7), high-volume concept, which will take up some of the revenue that previously was lost by hotels whose guests didn't want three courses every night. More importantly it also attracts most of its custom from non-residents - about 95%.
"That Café Bar is serving about 120,000 meals a year, with a profit of about 700,000," Caines says. "Because we are not paying rent that is all money added to your bottom line."
Although they all look like independent businesses from the front, at the back they all link up to the same kitchen. This is a moment Caines's eyes light up, leading us past the sandwich counter and into the Caf Bar's kitchen, where he slips into chef mode, tasting soups and lifting calamari out of the fryer.
"My head chef here, Simon Dow, also overlooks the pub food and the sandwiches. Only about 4% of the kitchen's output will be for the fine dining but this is about creating good food and service for everybody," he says. "I am the only two-star chef who engages all these levels. We don't devalue the sandwich."
Each ABode head chef has their gross profit margin set individually and each has the chance to find their own local suppliers. The kitchens, however, do have access to a database of centrally designed dishes from Gidleigh Park. The database has all the food costs, recipes and ingredients for each dish listed, as well as pictures for the less-confident chefs. Head chefs, of course, can give their own input, but the fact that dishes are designed at Gidleigh reinforces Caines's claims that each of his Michael Caines restaurants in the ABode hotels should be pushing
for a Michelin star and three AA rosettes.
"Gidleigh is going to be like an academy for ABode," Caines says, sitting back down. "I have 10 chefs who have passed through the door there who are ready for the new ABode sites. My sous chef at Gidleigh, Martin Donnelly, is all ready to go up to Glasgow for the opening and a chef de rang has been hand-picked to do training here so he can be sent up there as assistant manager."
Gidleigh itself is closing in January to undergo a major refurbishment and further investment from Brownsword. Caines is careful not to give anyone the impression that all his attention is trained on ABode, not least the inspectors, and says that the next step for Gidleigh has got to be winning three stars. "We want it to be the best country house hotel in the country," he says.
This is a real boon for the nascent brand. With so much expansion promised, it is vital that the hotels' personnel come ready developed at the highest levels if service standards are to be maintained and the brand can truly enter the marketplace fighting. Of course, not everyone can - or will - come from Gidleigh. The human resources team, led by Ros Young (herself previously at Malmaison), has already organised a graduate scheme with Oxford Brookes University's hotel management course, and an energetic recruitment programme is in full flow for Glasgow.
The management team is confident that as a new force with a young team ABode will be a very attractive employer. Certainly there is opportunity for promotion - in the kitchen, because of all the different styles of outlet, those who don't feel comfortable in the fine-dining sector, for example, will have the chance to move across to an atmosphere they prefer.
"What is right for some people won't be right for everyone," says Young. "This is about keeping staff and listening to them. We need to remain innovative and flexible if we want to keep people interested." She adds one more undeniable plus point: "I'm certainly not going to have a problem recruiting chefs because they all want to work with Michael."
Having not just Caines but another figurehead in Brownsword puts the brand in a special position, as Nick Halliday, the group's operations director explains. "Since Ken McCulloch left Malmaison there have been very few entrepreneur-led businesses in hotels," he says.
ABode, however, will be just that: a privately owned and entrepreneur-led operation. And judging by what they have already created, the brand will not only make an impact with the public; it could cause its competitors a headache as well.
The design's in the detail
When it comes to the rooms there is a unified plan. Designed (along with all the refurbishments) by Plumtree Mee, the Tadcaster-based architectural and design firm appointed for the project, the interiors are a clever blend of the luxurious and the homely. Though decorated in soft pastel shades (in contrast to, say, the masculine, bolder greens associated with the likes of Hotel du Vin), details such as rope lights wrapped around bed boards or the orange uplighters firing beams up from the floor give a fun-tinged edge.
Huge oversized mirrors lean up against the walls and, brilliantly, there are free-standing baths fitted, not behind closed doors, but in the actual bedroom. The effect is undeniably sexy, and makes ABode the type of place someone would visit on business and then return to with a partner.
Other features you are guaranteed to remember are the wet rooms (walk-in showers, without a door, available in the top tier rooms) and the huge Belfast basins - an element chosen by Brownsword and his wife, Christina. "Andrew is a creative person," Caines says. "He may not want to front the project completely, but he isn't here to be a silent partner either."
The "AB" of ABode, after all, stands for Andrew Brownsword and the branding is felt in subtle ways throughout the hotel. Instead of "Do not disturb" signs to hang on the door the signs read "Sleeping like a bABy". Instead of "Please clen", you have "ABit of a mess". It is a light-hearted detail that Caines hopes will encourage guests to spread the word.
Easy as ABC...
There will be four types of room available at all ABode hotels. At the Clarence this breaks down to:
- 24 "Comfortable" rooms at £125 per night
- 13 "Desirable" rooms at £140
- 12 "Enviable" rooms at £165
- 3 "Fabulous" rooms at £195
The team is hoping to achieve an average occupancy of 80% in 2006