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Cali net news
Cyberspace OdysseY
Caterer and Hotelkeeper
02 November 2000 by Andrew Davies
A young entrepreneur in Scotland is showing that by combining technology with good old-fashioned hospitality skills a failing business can not only be turned around but also become successful. Andrew Davies visits the Dunalastair hotel...
"I was an entrepreneur-waiter," explains Paul Edwards, managing director of the Dunalastair hotel in Kinloch Rannoch, Perthshire. "I was serving people in the restaurant and the only way I'd get access to the outside world was to ask the customers what they did for a living. So I'd say, 'Here's your soup, sir, and how much do you earn?'"
Edwards stares into the distance, reminiscing about his early days in the business when he was just a young man. The twist is that Edwards is still a young man, 25 years old to be exact, and not only in charge of an increasingly successful hotel, but also making waves as the head of a spin-off Internet company. Who said the hospitality industry has problems attracting young people?
The Dunalastair is a modest, three-star, 25-bedroom Highlands hotel with a 70-cover restaurant. It sits in a beautiful spot near Loch Rannoch and Loch Tummel and at first glance seems pretty typical of the region's hotel offering. Stuffed game hangs from the walls, dark wooden panelling lines the corridors and horse brasses hang next to the bottles of the whisky bar.
But all is not as it seems. When Edwards took over the hotel in 1997 it was worth £400,000 and made £20,000 a year profit, now it's worth £650,000, making £100,000 profit. Not only is Edwards one of the oldest people working there, but across the courtyard, above the converted-stable bar are the offices of his own Internet business.
But first things first: how did a 25-year-old come to be in charge of his own hotel, let alone run other businesses on the side?
The Dunalastair was actually previously owned by Edwards's parents, who bought it as a retirement investment in 1989. However, in 1997 with turnover sitting at £200,000 and occupancy at an embarrassing low, Edwards admits that their hearts just weren't in it and they were ready to sell up.
But Edwards had other ideas. After graduating with a degree in international politics from St Andrews University he arrived home and offered to take over. Suddenly, with zero experience, he found himself not just a hotelier, but a hotelier with a failing hotel.
"It wasn't good," he says. "We had 25 bedrooms with 10 en suite bathrooms, damp corridors, the lot. At the height of summer in August 1997 we had two people staying."
His inexperience meant he had to learn fast, which combined cornering other hoteliers and copying their strategies with waiting in the dining room, washing up in the kitchen and performing any other jobs that needed doing.
But he soon developed methods of his own. The hotel was in need of a refurbishment, and Edwards put in a new kitchen, upgraded all the furnishings and put en suite bathrooms in all the rooms - all for a total cost of just £70,000.
"One day I asked a customer what he did for a living and he said he was the manager of the Inter-Continental in Edinburgh. I asked him if he was chucking out any stuff, and he said, 'It's a funny thing you asked... '"
It turned out that the Inter-Continental had just redone 20 bedrooms, and so curtains, carpets and many other things ended up at Dunalastair. This began a long list of acquisitions for Edwards.
"We got two container lorry-loads of stuff from Gleneagles," he continues. "Down the corridors we've got the ballroom carpet from the Caledonian in Edinburgh, and our headboards are from the Balmoral. We spent £2,000 on the new kitchen: the extraction system was quoted at £8,000 new, and I paid £150 for our canopy and £200 for the fan. Both came brand new from an Asda cafi."
So, the hotel looked a lot better, but the question of how to get the guests to actually come and stay led to the real key to the Dunalastair's turnaround: the Internet.
A friend had approached Edwards while still at university, took him to one side and told him the Web was the next big thing. He became truly convinced when, not long after he took over, the Dunalastair got its first booking over the Internet.
"I thought, 'Wow, there must be more where that came from,'" he says. And he was right. In the same year he started to auction rooms over the Internet - one of only three hotels in Scotland doing so at the time - and began to place links through to the hotel's site on as many other sites as he could. Now occupancy sits at 80% across the year, with most bookings coming via the Web.
"We tried the Scottish Tourist Board and spent £5,000 with them, and it was £5,000 wasted," he says. "It's frightening how powerful the Internet is, and I didn't really realise it until the last quarter. I had £8,000 as a marketing budget and I underspent by £7,900. I pulled out of the marketing side of the tourist board. I thought, 'Bugger this, I'm going full Internet; every penny I spend is going to be on that."
Now more than 2,000 people a month from all over the world visit the Dunalastair Web site. Edwards tells with glee the story of one hotel break he put up for auction on a travel site: two people bid against each other through the night; the winner ended up bidding £65, and the loser ended up booking anyway.
But Edwards's passion for technology isn't just for marketing purposes. He has computers throughout the hotel so that staff can communicate with each other on an internal intranet. Plus, he hires most of his staff through the Web, with interesting requirements for any potential employees.
"We don't employ anyone who doesn't know how to at least design a Web site," he says. "That includes chefs, reception staff, anyone." But don't most people in the industry have trouble hiring chefs with cheffing skills, let alone IT ones?
"The Internet allows you to find anything," he answers. "The people are out there. If you want them, you can find them."
Edwards's passion for the Internet has led to a separate company, Cali Net, which is run from offices above the bar at Dunalastair. Formed at about the same time he took over the hotel, it now employs five people and acts as an Internet service provider and Web design company, creating and hosting sites for other hotels.
He also owns more than 200 Web domain names, including hotelstore.com, hoteldeals.com and hotelsupplies.co.uk, and considering he has been offered five-figure sums for some individual names he, understandably, has a big grin on his face when asked about the future.
By his own admission, Edwards's devotion to the Internet is bordering on obsession - he buys all his clothes, music, gifts and anything else he can think of through the Web - but his business would certainly not be in the position it is today without it.
"I've jumped feet-first in to cyberspace and been blown to bits in all directions," he says, "but I'm still all here, and still doing well."
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