Running an airport hotel is not exactly what Guy Hilton had in mind as the GM of the Hilton London Gatwick Airport said he always wanted to work in sport.
In fact, Hilton is as closely involved with sport as anyone in the hotel industry. His 821-room hotel is base for many associations – from football to field hockey. They find it extremely convenient to hold conferences and non-participatory training sessions in a hotel that is directly connected via a seven-minute indoor airbridge to London Gatwick airport.
Gatwick is Europe’s busiest for point-to-point flights with up to 55 aircraft movements per hour on its single-use runway, the world’s most efficient. Fly in direct, from hundreds of destinations worldwide, and get straight to your event without having to brave England’s weather, including rain. More often than not, one bedroom will temporarily be converted into a medical center with full diagnostic assessment facilities.
“It makes me feel as if I am part of the action,” said Hilton, whose name no one forgets, for there are few others, apart from the Marriott family, who share a family name with an instantly-recognizable global hotel group (Do some VIPs realize when they get a personalized welcome from the GM that he is a real person?).
When sports folk are in-house, usage of the 24-hour fitness center, a compact facility opening off the lobby, is naturally likely to be higher. They can also get more exercise by using the many easily accessible fire staircases of the five-floor hotel, or by running around the spacious airport workers’ carpark immediately outside.
“Personally, I prefer running on England’s gorgeous South Downs hills,” Hilton said. He took part in his sixth marathon just the other day, in Paris, on April 3, which he completed in three hours 45 minutes. “Practicing, I was only allowed coffee up to noon, which was difficult as we have a Costa Coffee franchise right in our lobby,” he said.
The hotel, which opened 1981, has average stay of 1.6 nights and, like all airport hotels, there are check-ins and check-outs at all hours (the airport is 24/7). “It keeps me, and my team, constantly on our toes,” admitted the GM, who looks straight at you when talking.
Despite industry-wide high turnover in the UK, this hotel manages to keep its multi-national workforce – including one young German woman, Anna, who has been at the hotel for eight years, to open the top floor executive lounge at 6 a.m. on a cold, wet morning. “It is my life,” she declared with a big smile.
Hilton further explained that he is actually doing what he always wanted – working with people. Born in Liverpool, he had always been happiest with a hubbub around him. He graduated from Sheffield Hallam University, also in northern England, after which he was nearly tempted into working with the Rugby Union organizing body.
After spending three years with Premier Hotel Liquidation, he opened, as GM, the first Park Plaza in the UK outside London, in Nottingham. He joined Hilton, in Leeds, in mid-2003 and he has been with the company, always in the UK, ever since. He moved to Gatwick, from Hilton Brighton Metropole, January 2013.
In 2015, despite increased immediate competition, Hilton London Gatwick Airport exceeded revenue forecasts by 1.5%, as well as EBITDA forecasts by 3.5%, and Hilton was named GM of the Year for Hilton’s Metro London area.
“Look at the advantages I have,” Hilton concluded. “I have a well-oiled machine of a hotel that runs like clockwork and, without having to brave the elements, I can fly to hundreds of destinations to take part in marathons.”