Operating in one of the fastest growing lodging sectors, 2022 has been another year of solid progress for The Inn Collection Group.
New owners, new headquarters, six new sites, the grand opening of The Northallerton Inn, and the significant expansion of its central support headcount are among the headlines from the pub with rooms operator.
For the group’s managing director Sean Donkin, a deep understanding of the business is the special ingredient that is opening the doors needed to maintain its growth.
“The reason we can continue investing is because we are well funded and the reason we are well funded, is because we are pretty good at what we do and are viewed as a stable and maturing business.
“We have a strong underlying business which is performing incredibly well and that’s not just a covid bounce back, we understand what the market is doing, and navigating that is the focus for now.
“A lot of our concentration for the next nine months is going to be around nailing the development of our sites under refurbishment. There are 12 of those, all set to reopen in the next 12 months so the investment side going into that is huge.”
The position as a maturing business saw ICG acquired by a new company backed by The Harris Family Trusts together with Kings Park Capital back in February, with the deal seeing an established association with the latter resumed by the group.
With a clear business model that sites are pubs with rooms rather than hotels with pubs, Donkin says the sale shows the strength of that position.
“The question posed to the guys at Kings Park was ‘if you could deploy x amount of pounds into UK hospitality where would it be?’ and their first response was ‘the company that we sold three years before’ so that is a testament to how the model holds true.
“It’s the oldest model in the world when it comes to hospitality, it’s been around before Jesus was born! Hotels do ground floor F&B and do it with good food, but the conviviality of that sort of restaurant or reception area is just so far away from what we do. That is why we are pubs with rooms rather than hotels with pubs.
“As the mix changes in the estate with number of bedrooms increasing and ground floor spaces getting bigger there is an argument, we may adapt to have two models to cover the differing sizes but tweaking to suit individual sites is what we do already.”
Having risen to a total of 33 sites at time of print from a starting point of three just nine years ago, that rapid expansion has seen the group’s footprint increase considerably, with Inns now across the North East, the Lake District, Yorkshire, Lancashire and most recently, North Wales.
And whilst the ideal world would see steady rather than the explosive growth in recent times, Donkin is pleased that ICG are well placed to seize on the right opportunities when they arise.
“The two sites we have just completed on in Wales were pre-planned and were in trail for a long time, but you can’t dictate the market when these opportunities are going to come along.
“In a perfect world, you’d get a site every two or three months, but the reality is that people don’t sell that way.
“The current economic climate may create opportunities but what we look for are the very best opportunities, not just acquirng for the sake of it.
Explaining the recent acquisitions in North Wales, Donkin details how an understanding of the market and the company’s customer base drove that decision.
“The areas we’ve moved to, North Wales in particular, have been monitored and researched for a good three or four years and it is a popular destination.
“It is a beautiful part of the world with fantastic natural characteristics and an abundance of compelling reasons to visit and the customers we see visiting those areas are those which are visiting where we operate already.
Having a central support hub for the group’s Inns is another area where expansion has been visual in 2022, with a move to new offices at Quorum Park and a significant increase in the number of colleagues working in the background to allow the customer facing teams to focus on their guests.
With an ethos of “Making people happy” across the group, Donkin says creating strong foundations at the centre is the best way to empower the group’s people to achieve that aim and will be a continuing focus in order to drive the company’s forward momentum.
“We started off with three people sharing two desks as head office three, four years ago and now there are in excess of 75 people in the central support hub. That increase has been necessary through the development of the company itself.
“We’ve gone from 350 employees four years ago to close to 1000 now, which will double by the end of next year. So how do you ensure the culture and the values of the business aren’t diluted?
“We acquire sites with people who don’t know us, with large staff numbers who have done certain things their way forever because that’s the way the previous owners did it. Integrating them into our model is going to be important in transitioning from a medium sized business to a large one and not trip ourselves up on the way.
“What we are doing now is laying the foundations for a massive concentration on culture so that everyone in the business understands the journey that we are going on together.”
“We are on a very long-term plan with the new owners, and we have an ability to plan a lot further into the future and that is the bit I’m most excited by – that no matter what happens to me or anyone in the business, that ICG set to continue for the long term.”
