Monday Interview: Claire Steven, General Manager at Oulton Hall
A senior manager at a four star hotel outside Leeds said the business has successfully adapted to a changing but buoyant market, investing hundreds of thousands to continue drawing in visitors.
General Manager Claire Steven has worked at Oulton Hall for four years. She was previously at the Nottingham Belfry Hotel and has been a General Manager for 10 years. She worked her way up from the hospitality industry’s grassroots after initially being employed as a waitress.
“At that time I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school but definitely knew I didn’t want to be sitting at a desk from nine to five,” she explained.
She said she then discovered her passion for hospitality so went on to study at the Scottish Hotel School at Strathclyde Business School, before taking postgraduate courses in management at Oxford Brookes and Cornell Universities.
“Oulton Hall is just stunning,” she said. “Every day you come up the driveway and you can’t help falling back in love with the property again. It’s got so much character and is set in amazing grounds.”
The hotel employs 250 people and has a turnover of about £10.5m.
The historic 18th century building has been a hotel since 1993. It used to be owned by De Vere Hotels but was bought by QHotels in 2014. In 2017 it was bought by its current owner – Aprirose.
The venue has a 27-hole golf course, a spa and an AA Rosette award-winning restaurant. It is a popular wedding venue and also has conferencing facilities, contributing to the meeting and events sector in Leeds.
Oulton Hall benefited from a £1m refurbishment of its bedrooms in 2016.
Steven said: “There is a lot of general maintenance and upkeep, which a property of this size needs. It’s like the Forth Road Bridge, you always need to have the paintbrush out! And of course commercial grade facilities cost more than what you’d have in your own home.
“We continue to look at ways of refreshing our product. We look at new ways of doing things and more products we can bring to the hotel.
“Over the last 12 months we’ve been extremely busy, and we’ve seen a real boom in business. We host many events and our wedding business remains strong.
“We have seen fewer people booking us for conferences, and those who do are booking with shorter lead times. But we have other types of business filling these gaps and those big events which take place in the Leeds area have a positive impact on our business.”
Steven said the hotel had a good reputation for the discrete service it offers players from high-profile touring sports teams. Earlier this year it hosted the England and India squads during the Cricket World Cup.
And last year the hotel hosted the England football team prior to their match against Costa Rica at Elland Road in the build up to the 2018 World Cup.
Steven said: “Every team is different and we’ve seen an increasing trend of players coming here with their own chefs who work alongside our team to ensure specific dietary requirements are met.
“We’ll go out of our way to source products sports teams ask for – they can be very particular about the brands they want.”
She said about 90% of the hotel’s visitors are UK based, though it is now working with Visit Leeds to undertake more outreach to attract visitors from major markets such as China and India.
