This four-star chain offers a diverse range of properties throughout the UK, finds Liat Clark.
Who are they?
A four-star UK brand with 21 regional properties, including ones in Manchester and Leeds, and aspirations to open in London. It launched both a reward scheme and its business traveller concept, Q Club, last year, the latter promising “five-star rooms in a four-star hotel”.
Where in the UK?
Q Hotels’ 21 properties range from the 148-room Westerwood near Glasgow to the Grade II Listed, 312-room Midland in Manchester. It launched under the name Quintessential Hotels in 2003, when it acquired a central Leeds hotel and a seven-hectare Warwickshire estate from Le Méridien. The brand then concentrated on building a portfolio of regional business and leisure properties, acquiring city-centre hotels (Manchester) and country estates on city outskirts (Cambridge, Oxford, Nottingham). The broad spread of destinations is also down to the group’s acquisition of Marston Hotels in 2006, which took its property count from nine to 21.
What are the hotels like?
Since the brand typically acquires existing properties it can overhaul, no two are alike. Crewe Hall in Cheshire is a 17th-century 117-room mansion that can count the Queen as a former guest, while the Cambridge Belfry features an ultra-modern extension. What they have in common is a four-star status delivered by a £160 million refurbishment programme across the portfolio, carried out over the past five years. This refit put as much focus on service quality as aesthetics, says David Taylor, Q Hotels’ sales director.
“Service is one of the most important elements to how we run the business,” he says. “We believe that if we invest in a hotel, that’s great, but without a very high standard of service, we’re unlikely to attract the type of business that we seek, and that business is unlikely to come back to us.”
The brand also places an emphasis on consistency, something made possible by the fact it owns and manages all 21 hotels. For example, some £100,000 has been spent on developing its “Q Star” bedrooms, a product that was launched last year after the company asked 3,000 guests for their room preferences. There are between six and ten Q Star rooms (for a £30 supplementary charge) in every hotel, each featuring unlimited free wifi, a king-size bed, luxury bedding, Pecksniff’s toiletries and a drinks package including a mini bottle of Chardonnay wine.
Are they for business travellers?
Although the Queens in Leeds (see “Leeds means business”, businesstraveller.com/archive/2011/february-2011) and the Midland in Manchester are Q Hotels’ only major city-centre properties, all the properties have extensive meeting space. The Midland and the Nottingham Belfry both boast 700-capacity conference facilities.
Taylor says business travel and meetings make up about two-thirds of Q Hotels’ total business, and the Q Star bedrooms were developed specifically with the corporate traveller in mind. In Leeds, £500,000 was spent last year on turning the hotel’s eighth floor into a dedicated business level, the Q Club, with 18 guestrooms and an executive lounge offering meeting space, an outdoor terrace, workstations, a continental breakfast and free drinks. Taylor describes the new rooms as “a five-star product in a four-star hotel”.
Is there a loyalty scheme?
Last year Q Hotels created Thank Q, a reward scheme for business travellers with separate benefits for individual and group bookings. The scheme is points-based, offering two points for every pound spent, which can be redeemed against any hotel services, including room upgrades and spa treatments (from 3,000 points) and meals (from 2,000 points).
Businesses receive a 10 per cent discount on flexible day rates, one point for every overnight stay and one point for every £100 spent on meetings – they can then exchange 50 points for a two-person meal and 100 for a one-night spa break for two.
Thank Q cardholders can also skip check-in and check-out queues and have their preferences recorded, such as their favourite room or newspaper. “Guests recognise we’re making an effort to understand their needs, and to provide for them when they return,” Taylor says.
Tell me the good news…
Q Hotels is taking the demand for free wifi seriously. Every branch already offers free wifi for Thank Q members but it is now in the process of implementing a free service for all via BT, which will provide 100MB of bandwidth capacity in every hotel, with a standard of 10MB and the option to increase by up to 90MB when necessary. The project is aimed for completion by the end of the month (with the exception of Hellidon Lakes in Northamptonshire and Aldwark Manor in York).
“I’ve stayed at a lot of hotels that say they have free wifi, but you log on and it takes ten minutes to get on to the company gateway because the bandwidth is so small,” Taylor says. He maintains that the £1.7 million cost of investment will not be recouped by increasing room rates. “It’s a basic standard that should be provided – it’s almost like having a kettle or phone in the room,” he says.
And the bad…
There is no London hotel. “It is a gap in the portfolio and is obviously something we would like to have within the group,” Taylor says. “We look at each individual opportunity as it comes up.” The group doesn’t have an affiliation with any existing London hotels, but Taylor says this option is likely to be available before Q Hotels acquires its own property in the capital. “It hasn’t yet come off – I think for us it’s about making sure we have the right partner,” he says.
Future plans?
While there are no imminent plans to buy more hotels, Taylor says: “The market is moving quite quickly so I wouldn’t be too surprised to see us linked to various movements in the market in the future.” There are also tentative plans to add a Q Club to other branches, the Manchester property being the next obvious choice, according to Taylor. This is dependent on each hotel’s internal structure, however, since building the Leeds club involved gutting an entire floor and losing bedrooms to make space for larger rooms.
Where can I learn more?
There is live room availability at qhotels.co.uk, a separate site for Thank Q members (thankq.qhotels.co.uk) and a web site for researching and booking conferences and events at qconferences.co.uk.
