New British members at Relais & Châteaux

12 August 2004 by
New British members at Relais & Châteaux

The upmarket Relais & Châteaux hotel and restaurant consortium has accepted two new British members, while several existing UK members face a 12-month probationary period following changes of ownership.

New to the consortium is the 19-bedroom, 900-year-old Amberley Castle in West Sussex, which was transformed into a hotel by the Cummings family in 1988.

The other newcomer is the 15-bedroom Kinloch House hotel in Perthshire, which was recently bought by the Allen family, who owned Airds hotel in Port Appin, Argyllshire, when it was a consortium member.

The new recruits bump UK membership up to 24 hotels and one restaurant (London's Le Gavroche).

"We will continue to ensure that our guests experience the 5Cs - courtesy, charm, character, calm and cuisine - which represent the quality charter of this highly prestigious brand," commented Martin Cummings, proprietor of Amberley Castle.

Two hotels are currently under probation to ensure the new owners uphold the consortium's rules and standards - the 18-bedroom Summer Lodge in Evershot, Dorset, which was bought by Red Carnation Hotels this autumn, and the 13-bedroom Buckland Manor hotel in Buckland, Gloucestershire, which recently joined the Von Essen Hotels stable.

The legendary Sharrow Bay hotel on Lake Ullswater in the Lake District, a founding member of the UK chapter, will face the same scrutiny if Von Essen's plans to take a majority stake in it this week go ahead.

Martin Lewis, chairman of the consortium's UK chapter and proprietor of Longueville Manor hotel in Jersey, said that there was no reason the three hotels could not remain members if they upheld standards.

He added that Relais & Châteaux also closely monitored changes in general managers and head chefs to ensure they did not destabilise continuity and quality.

Although the consortium was founded for independently owned hotels of character, and excludes the standardisation favoured by corporate operators, Lewis said that the rules had been amended over the years to allow in some groups. For instance, Historic House Hotels has three member hotels and Le Manoir Aux Quat'Saisons is owned by the large Orient-Express Hotels group.

Nicholas Romano, operations director at privately owned Von Essen, said that Relais & Châteaux was known for "policing its standards vigorously and ruthlessly expelling those that do not comply with its charter".

He added that Von Essen wanted its new buys to remain in the consortium. Long- serving staff would stay on and Von Essen had a "bottomless pit of money" to continue improvements.

Relais &Chateaux

  • The consortium, which was founded in France in 1954 and is celebrating its 50th anniversary, currently has 450 members across 50 countries.
  • For 2004, it has added 24 new properties worldwide - including new territories such as Madagascar,Tahiti and Martinique - but lost 34 members. Two-thirds were expelled owing to failing standards, notably in France, Austria and Spain. The one British loss was La Tante Claire restaurant, which closed this year.
  • Lewis said that the consortium was in the middle of a "drastic" four-year shake-up aimed at weeding out members whose standards were faltering.
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