Tasting Victory by Gerard Basset

Author:Gerard Basset [Basset, Gerard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783528615
Publisher: Unbound
Published: 2020-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

Business Expansion and Personal Development

By 1997, we had identified a few towns as possible sites for our second Hotel du Vin and we finally selected Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Like Winchester, Tunbridge Wells was a prosperous place and close to London. It was in the south of England, but far enough away from Winchester that it wouldn’t compete, without being so far that it would be difficult for us to get to. A hotel in the centre of the town was for sale, bigger than the Winchester hotel and extremely well situated. The back of the hotel looked out onto Calverley Park and as the hotel was high up on the hill, it provided a great view for the bedrooms at the back. The hotel had a smaller car park than the Winchester one, but there was a commercial car park just over the road, so residents’ parking was not an issue. It was in need of repair, though.

With the money from our shareholder, a bank loan and a small input from a new partner, we bought the hotel and closed it immediately to start the refurbishment, so that it would be open for the Christmas period.

The new partner was Peter Chittick, a Canadian. Peter was a qualified lawyer and also had an MBA from the famous INSEAD Business School outside Paris. He owned a lovely hotel in Provence, but as his wife was now working in a top position in London, he wanted to come back and live in England. Peter became a full partner of our small group of two hotels. He would be in charge of Hotel du Vin Tunbridge Wells and responsible for its day-to-day running. Robin and I would visit Tunbridge Wells once or twice a week to give Peter some support and we often stayed over. To help Peter with the running of the restaurant we had enrolled Henri Chapon, the winner of the 1995 UK Sommelier of the Year and head sommelier of the two-Michelin-star Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons in Oxford. Henri was a friend of mine, but actually I was not keen for him to work with us, as I did not want to mix business and friendship. While Henri was undoubtedly very talented, I knew that he did not have quite the same way of thinking as Robin and me on certain service aspects. Nevertheless, Robin convinced me that we should employ Henri, so finally I agreed. Peter and Henri opened Hotel du Vin Tunbridge Wells, but sadly their partnership did not really work as well as we had all hoped. They often disagreed and could rarely come to a good solution.

We started Tunbridge Wells with twenty-five bedrooms (later it would become thirty-two bedrooms), two function rooms – a large one, capable of accommodating eighty covers and a small one, for fifteen covers – a large bar and large lounge, as well as a snooker room. Tunbridge Wells did not take off as rapidly as Winchester did, but the performance slowly improved and after a year we were happy with how it was doing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.