Overall ranking: 68

Hoteliers ranking: 21

Snapshot

Peter Lederer is the managing director of Gleneagles hotel in Auchterarder, Perthshire. The hotel, which opened in 1924 in the style of a French chateau, has an international reputation for high standards and has won 40 major awards in the past 10 years alone. It’s an AA top 200 hotel with five red stars and a Michelin-star, four-rosette restaurant run by Andrew Fairlie.

Lederer is also a major player in countless Scottish tourism and training bodies.

Career guide

Lederer was born in London in 1950, but lived in Canada for much of his early career when he filled operational, administrative and senior management roles with the Four Seasons hotel group and Plaza Hotels. He was also a partner for two years in a hospitality consulting group.

He joined Gleneagles as general manager in 1984 when it was owned by Peter Tyrie and was promoted to managing director in 1987.

What we think

Lederer has been at the helm of Gleneagles for 18 years and played a major part in its transformation from a tired, uneconomic, golf-focused hotel that opened just seven months a year into a thriving all-year leisure resort with a much broader client base.

On top of the four championship golf courses, he and Tyrie added an outstanding leisure complex, fashion shows, a shopping arcade, and a range of outdoors activities such as riding, falconry, archery, and off-roading.

It’s an achievement that won Gleneagles the Catey Hotel of the Year award in 1985 and Lederer the Caterer Hotelier of the Year award in 1997.

More recently, Lederer and his operations director Patrick Elsmie (who won the Caterer Hotelier of the Year award in 2004) lured Andrew Fairlie away from Edinburgh’s One Devonshire Gardens to run his own award-winning restaurant in Gleneagles in 2001.

In 2002, Lederer added the 59-bedroom Braid House wing to the estate and in 2003 he announced plans to build 50 luxury timeshare units on the Gleneagles estate, called Glenmore. He is also seeking planning permission for a second project on adjacent land, Gleneagles West, which will incorporate a 180-bedroom hotel, golf and leisure facilities and 250 residential holiday and timeshare homes.

Lederer has always been able to see the bigger picture and is respected for his commitment to raising standards and training opportunities in the hospitality and tourism sectors.

His untiring efforts to promote Scotland earned him a Caterer & Hotelkeeper Catey Tourism Award in 1993, an OBE in 1994 and a CBE in 2005. He is a founding member of marketing group Connoisseurs Scotland and of Quality Scotland Foundation. He has been chairman of VisitScotland since 2001 and is a board member of the Leading Hotels of the World consortium. 

Lederer is respected by his staff as a “brilliant motivator” and has supported countless education and training initiatives. He is a trustee of the Hospitality Industry Trust Scotland, The Queen Margaret University College Foundation and the Springboard Educational Trust. He has also chaired the Tourism Training consortium and served on the Scottish Advisory Council for Education and Training Targets.

Lederer is a Master Innholder and Freeman of the City of London, and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Innholders.