Robin Hutson, one of the UK’s most charismatic hoteliers, has always been ahead of the curve. In 1994 he co-founded the Hotel du Vin group, one of the earliest and most successful iterations of the boutique hotel in the UK. Hotel du Vin sold in 2004 for £66 million and Hutson went on to chair the equally successful Soho House Group. His current projects include the Lime Wood Hotel in the New Forest in Hampshire, a high-end hideaway that runs at 90% occupancy most months, and the Pigs – a group of four delightfully individual hotels in the south-west of England. The first Pig to open, The Pig in the Forest, is a neighbour of Lime Wood, The Pig in the Wall is in Southampton and The Pig near Bath is tucked into the folds of the beautiful Mendip Hills. The Pig on the Beach in Studland, Dorset, which launched this month, is the latest addition; reservations opened in February – and 1,100 room nights were booked within 24 hours. The Pigs, informal and unfussy, charming and friendly, reflecting their owner, are a whole new take on the quintessentially English country house hotel.
So: how do you create a hotel experience that seduces everyone from celebrities to weekenders to locals to foodies? Robin Hutson draws on experience, the zeitgeist and his own personal touch, as he explains
Spotting what guests really want …
“I trained with the Savoy Group and ended up as general manager at the Chewton Glen Hotel in the New Forest, which I’d never expected to do that young – I was 28. I stayed there for eight really interesting, formative years. I’d always been at the five-star end of the market, in London, in Paris at the Crillon, in Bermuda, then at Chewton Glen, so I’d seen a good cross-section and by the time I left Chewton Glen in 1994, it was becoming very evident there was a different feeling about what the guest wanted. Up until that time, a five-star country house hotel was quite a stiff and starchy experience. There were dress codes in the restaurants, you couldn’t bring in kids under a certain age – and the mood was very definitely changing. Wealthy, well-travelled individuals who were staying with us didn’t want to wear a tie and jacket for dinner, they did want to bring their kids, and I found myself defending policies I didn’t really believe in. And the food scene had started to change too. In London, it was Terence Conran, Quaglino’s, Mezzo, Antony Worrall Thompson – the modern bistro was born. We found we were serving up a style of hospitality that was beginning to wane for our guests, who were finding different things in London. There was a general momentum of change – Mezzo and Quaglino’s were totally a breath of fresh air, so exciting, with a mad, frenetic style that ignored many of the old principles. There was a new realisation that going out to a restaurant was not just about great food but about having a great time – and everyone was having a great time!”
… and launching a new breed of hotel
“On the hotel side, there was the birth of townhouse hotels like Dorset Square, Egerton House, the Franklin: places that didn’t aim to be full-service hotels but provided very good bedrooms and breakfast and more personal service in smaller buildings. Blakes was another forerunner. I’d always preferred small hotels so I started to become rather interested. By the time we came to formulate the plan for Hotel du Vin in 94, the two headline styles were the modern bistro and the townhouse hotel and you threw those together into something that became the boutique hotel, though I’ve never found an entirely satisfactory definition! What was interesting in the provinces was that in every high street there was an old coaching inn which often occupied a prime position. They had fallen out of fashion over time – they were trying to emulate the five-star style of the grander hotels but without the skill-set among the team to deliver it. You’d get very fancy menus and a very over-the-top service but it was all rather tacky as it wasn’t done with the skill of the Savoy or Claridge’s. Hotel du Vin picked up on all these points. I was ready to start my own business and in a very good position to observe what was going on – and many of the principles we started from back then are the ones I still use now. I wanted every room to have a great shower and a great bed. I was sleeping on a Vi-Spring mattress myself – and I’ve bought hundreds of them over the years. In 1994, most hotels operated with sheets and blankets. I slept under a duvet – we were one of the first to put duvets on the bed. We spent a lot of money on pillows. When Hotel du Vin started, our rooms were £100 a night but there was Egyptian cotton on the beds. And we were the first to put fresh milk in the rooms for making tea and coffee. Those little plastic pots: who sits there thinking ‘these are great!’ – other than the hotel’s accountants?”
The Pig: a new take on the country house hotel
“Drawing on the Hotel du Vin experience, we’re really interested in that price point. Generally in this country, we’ve always done the top of the market pretty well, but the middle bit, the bit that most of us can afford, not so well. And there certainly isn’t good penetration around the country. The way the Pig first came about was opportunistic. I was looking after the Lime Wood Hotel in the New Forest and the hotel down the road was losing money. I looked at that hotel and its one redeeming feature was a walled garden – full of weeds. When we started to put onto paper our thoughts about how the Pig could be, we looked at how we could pick up on the nation’s interest in home-grown food, in provenance, and bring it right to the fore of how we were going to market a country house hotel. Country house hotels are difficult to make money out of: you’re full at the weekends but empty in the week and a wet Tuesday in February is a pretty sad prospect. So if we could take a Hotel du Vin price point but give it a touchpoint that really differentiated it, we felt we’d be in with a chance. The name was very important. Most country house hotels are the something-something Manor or the something-something Lawn but I was rather influenced by the Spotted Pig in New York, where you have this very rural, earthy-sounding restaurant in Manhattan. We thought of variations, the wild pig and so on, but in the end we just went with the Pig. That name says quite a few things. It sounds a bit like a pub. An issue with most country house hotels is that people are scared to drive up to them, they don’t know what they’ll be getting. But country pubs, people don’t mind at all! And if we then over-deliver, that’s fine – the name has got people up the drive. And we wanted it to sound earthy and homey, very approachable, not in any way elitist. It’s all about bringing the garden to the forefront not just of our marketing but genuinely into the restaurant, the décor, the bar. It’s the tag that informs every part of the business. My wife chooses all the interiors and, if you look closely, there are references everywhere.”
The personal touch
“The residential side of the business is all from London and inside the M25, there’s no doubt about that. This kind of market segmentation is really interesting. The top of the pyramid of wealth is quite a small triangle but as you move down it, there are more people. On one side, we’re attracting the mid-market as we’re in their price bracket – but we also find some quite smart people with a good amount of disposable cash choose to come to us, because not every weekend is a Lime Wood weekend and not every weekend is a couple of grand. You can come and spend a weekend at the Pig and leave with a bill of £500. Pricing is pretty important. For London and the surrounding market it’s all about weekends. Locally, when you operate in an area like Hampshire or Dorset, you can’t afford to only go after one sector of the market. You can’t say ‘OK, our clientele are 30-40-something marketing executives’ – you have to be a broad church that appeals across the age groups. We want to be cool enough for the kids – well, my sons are in their 20s – but not too scary for the older people – my parents are in their 80s. I’d like to think that our own house is equally welcoming to young and old. Our businesses have always had a big slice of us in them. It’s a very personal affair. Judy [his wife] recently said to me ‘We must go out and buy some more vintage glassware for the bar.’ With 40 years of experience, we go and buy individual glasses from junk shops – I don’t suppose many Hilton executives would do that. If you came to our home, you’d say ‘Now I understand where the feeling comes from.’”