Robert Cook was born and raised in a hotel in Aberdeen, Scotland, and used that as a springboard to leadership roles at a list of hotels — primarily in the United Kingdom — most recently as chief executive of Malmaison and Hotel du Vin. In mid-January Cook, 46, became CEO of Warrington, U.K.-based De Vere Village Hotels, which currently boasts 26 U.K. hotels owned and operated by De Vere Group.
Cook has big plans for the 3-star Village: In addition to opening 15 to 20 new-build properties over the next five years — including expanding the brand north into Scotland and southeast around London — Cook wants to boost the hotels’ rate, which he says currently averages £60 (US$96), 25% thanks to guestroom enhancements including bigger flatscreen televisions, surround sound and better beds.
HOTELS recently spoke with Cook about his Village vision.
HOTELS: What attracted you to De Vere Village?
Robert Cook: I’ve known Village for a while. I believe that as a story it was a very well-kept secret. The board and bank also are very keen to expand this business, so it’s a growth story.
I have a very definite style about how I run hotels. I’m a hotelier first of all — there are very few hoteliers left at CEO level running hotel groups — who believes in what the brand stands for and what it is. Therefore I think I can bring a different slant to it. I’ll almost create Village by Robert Cook. I think we can grow its demographic and its aspirations as a brand and really put the name up in lights.
HOTELS: What characterizes the De Vere Village brand?
Cook: One hundred-twenty rooms is the average size. They lie on the outskirts of large cities on good motorway networks. I think that’s a good model; however I think if you take the analogy of the cities of old, we’ve always been outside the city walls. I think we can just be inside, but there is a fine balance. If you’re too close to the city center, you don’t get the same attraction of food and beverage areas because people migrate into the city.
It’s a very interesting business and a very misunderstood business. Under one roof, I have 20,000 sq ft (1,858 sq m) of leisure in terms of health and fitness and spa. We have between 3,500 and 4,000 members of the health and fitness center in most Village hotels. Food and beverage is also massive. We’ve got a traditional British pub called the Victory Pub in each Village hotel. We have a grill room in each Village hotel, and we have very big meetings and events space in each Village hotel. It’s not just a rooms business. Village is almost an urban resort — an affordable urban resort.
HOTELS: What kind of stamp do you hope to put on De Vere Village?
Cook: When I took over Malmaison and Hotel du Vin they were very young fledgling brands, and I had the ability to grow them but equally keep the DNA of what that brand stood for. I think that’s very important. This business is a very good business. My immediate goals are to get it better known.
Number two, I’ve got to reach out — not change where we are demographically and who we speak to, but make it more open about who we speak to.
Thirdly, I want to develop food and beverage brands with partners and internally. Food and beverage is in the heart of any hotel. I want to grow that food and beverage culture within.
Equally, and probably most importantly, I have a big responsibility to grow talent within this business and harness the young talent we’ve got. That’s feeding our growth. It’s a lot easier to grow a business with the talent you’ve got from within than what you’ve got outside because it understands what the business is.
HOTELS: How do you plan to get the Village story out?
Cook: Social media is a fantastic medium. I think that the mixture of social media — blogging, Tweeting — will be a great asset. It’s about web. It’s about data capture, talking to new audiences and bringing in partners to align our brand with their database.
HOTELS: What else you can share regarding your development plans?
Cook: We’re not going to change the model, but we will be opportunistically led. Because we’ve got 3,500 to 4,000 leisure club members I need 3.2 acres of land to build one of these because I need so much car parking. We are sort of limited to where we can go, but that’s the success of the model.
HOTELS: Overall, where would you like to see De Vere Village in one, two, five years?
Cook: In a year’s time, I would like to be saying to you we’re in construction on the first five sites. I’ve now got the name in lights — a lot more people know about it. And we’ve moved our food and beverage on a bit in terms of a new grill room that we’re creating and our pub has become a lot more British.
In three years, I’d like to think we’ve opened seven or eight, and there are another seven or eight in construction or agreed.
In five years, I’d like to be retired playing golf. No — in five years, we may have gotten up to 15 hotels, and we may have gotten to a saturation point in the U.K., but who knows?
HOTELS: Longer term, could the brand move beyond the U.K.?
Cook: I don’t think it’s on the agenda today because there’s so much to do here yet, but it’s like any good brand. If you have a great brand proposition, that’s well known, well tested, but equally has the ability to change its spots depending on the location, absolutely it could go overseas. If we make enough noise and we get the U.K. right, the sky’s the limit.
HOTELS: There are a lot of positives for De Vere Village, but what one or two areas present the best opportunities for improvement going forward?
Cook: We need to be better at room rate. Like any hotel group, I would like to strive for consistency. It’s been a tough time for the hotel industry and industry in general. We’re coming out of the worst economic storm, and people have had to cut the cloth accordingly. But it’s an interesting time here in the U.K. with the Olympics coming. There’s a lot of hope that the Olympics will be the catalyst to get us out of the economic mess we’re in. If that happens that’s great, because that will allow businesses to start breathing again. That said, I would like to think that by growing — and even if the economy doesn’t change, we are going to grow this business — that gives opportunity for people to know about us. By telling people what we do and how good we are at it, we’ll drive room rate, hopefully.
This business isn’t broken. It’s a very well-run business. You just want to see where you can make your mark and where you can improve things.