De Vere loses second general manager within a year at Cameron House

De Vere’s Cameron House hotel at Loch Lomond is to part ways with its second general manager within a year, Caterersearch can reveal.

Mark Rose, who joined the property as general manager in January, confirmed that he was working his notice period and would be leaving the De Vere property shortly.

The news comes six months after the departure of award-winning manager Philip Mahoney, who walked out of the property in January this year, less than a year after joining from the Radisson SAS Glasgow hotel.

De Vere is currently undertaking a £25m refurbishment of Cameron House in a self-set bid to make it the best hotel resort in Scotland and has spent millions upgrading its golf courses to host top-flight events.

The group’s operations director Brian McCarthy declined to comment on whether a replacement for Rose had been found but said the departure would not affect the redevelopment of the property in “the slightest”.

Although Rose refused to comment on the reasons for his departure, his predecessor Mahoney told the Scottish Herald in January that his departure was down to “differences with the De Vere Hotels over the business’ strategic approach and a lack of clarity about its intentions”.

He added: “I was not enjoying working there. It is difficult to know whether they were unhappy with me and my performance, or whether it was with me expressing my own unhappiness with the situation. Being a bit bolshie does not always make you popular.”

It is believed Colin Bussey, food and beverage director at Cameron House, left in March.

Rose’s is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from De Vere, which is owned by Richard Balfour-Lynn’s Alternative Hotel Group (AHG).

Graham White, marketing director at De Vere, will leave next month, while Niels Sherry quit as chief operating officer of the De Vere Deluxe brand in January.

Jeremy Rata, general manager of De Vere’s Grand in Brighton departed in March, and Andrew Coney, general manager of Slaley Hall, in Northumberland, left a week later.

In March Caterer revealed that AHG was to close De Vere’s head-office in Daresbury, Warrington.

Last month McCarthy, who joined in February from gym chain Esporta, said the decisions to leave had been "amicable" and that the restructuring of the head office was "completely unlinked" to the senior departures.

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By Gemma Sharkey

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