The Greathouse Kington Langley.

Operational Statement

The Old Bell Hotel, has been in the same ownership since 2003, and is a 35 bedroom 4* hotel with a restaurant, conferencing and function facilities.

The Hotel is seeing substantial growth and success within the corporate market, as well as well as its private hire offering (namely conferencing, events and functions). As a result of this growth, the business undertook an internal Feasibility Study to assess how it could invest and expand in its growth markets.

The result of this was that, within the limitations of being a Grade 1 listed heritage asset, it’s small car park and limited grounds, the management took the strategic view to pursue growth by acquiring a complementary local site

Greathouse Kington Langley was identified as a viable site due to the following factors:

Geographical Location: • The Greathouse is located on the Road between (with it’s mainline station to London and Bristol) and Junction 17 of the M4 (less than 3 miles) making it ideally suited for business travellers. • The Greathouse is only 7.7 miles from The Old Bell Hotel which provides a realistic opportunity for staff and infrastructure to move between the businesses. • The Greathouse is also located less than 3 miles from the Chippenham Gateway scheme launching in Q2 2020, which will provide one-million square feet of commercial premises on the doorstep.

The Building: • The Old Bell Hotel, since being established as an inn in 1220, has evolved and grown substantially including substantial Edwardian extensions, but it’s heritage status is a major part of it’s appeal to visitors. The Greathouse is another heritage asset which is based around an ancient (17th Century) fabric, with extensive Edwardian additions (especially to the rear). • Due to decades of ‘practicality driven’ care home design, and alterations, the heritage asset has been substantially diminished. This affords us the exciting opportunity to restore The Greathouse back to its former glory and return as many features of the ‘estate’ as possible. • The utilitarian late 20th century extensions can be re-purposed and re-finished in order to create more visually appropriate conferencing and events facilities. • The six-acres of grounds are substantially larger than The Old Bell’s, allowing us more space to host corporate events and team building exercises which is a key growth market. The limited gardens of The Old Bell are also frequently raised as an issue by potential customers looking to book the hotel for a wedding.

Sustainability: • The extensive gardens will provide space for us to create a kitchen garden and glasshouse from which we can grow and source our own produce for consumption on site.

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• Making use of the 20th century extensions of The Greathouse as our dining and function spaces will allow us to ‘repurpose’ an otherwise undesirable building, the demolition of which would create a substantial environmental impact which can now be avoided. • The age and condition of the infrastructure within The Old Bell Hotel means it is an expensive and costly building to run from an environmental point of view. Starting anew with the restoration of The Greathouse, allows us the opportunity to invest in sustainability driven mechanical and electrical infrastructure for the business to operate from.

The Old Bell Hotel have acquired The Greathouse with a view to creating a hotel capable of taking advantage of the biggest growth areas in the market and develop a boutique hotel with a focus on high quality corporate and leisure bed and breakfast accommodation, whilst offering an enticing facility for conferences and events.

The Greathouse

The site is perfectly suited to operate as a ‘modular’ hotel, allowing us to trade the hotel out of the Main House on a day-to-day basis, and open the Function Spaces when these spaces are booked.

The ‘Main House’ comprises of the key hotel spaces, within the historic form of The Greathouse.

The ‘Function Space’ is the proposed upgraded and re-finished late 20th century wing, which contains the kitchens, the dining and bar space, as well as the larger Function and Meeting Rooms.

The basis of the operation of The Greathouse Kington Langley is as follows:

• The hotel will have 12 bedrooms which will be available for bed and breakfast accommodation with a special focus on business and corporate travellers. Hotel guests will have access to the first floor and enjoy a buffet breakfast the ‘central hall’ the following morning. • The hotel will provide a diverse range of conferencing facilities designed to attract high value residential corporate away-days, product launches, residential conferencing as well as a foundation of smaller meetings and conferences for local businesses. • The hotel will be available for private hire and provide an exclusive and premium venue for private dining, wakes, funerals, weddings and private parties. • A food and beverage team are on site to service the bed and breakfast guests and our pre- booked corporate and private events to the highest standards. When considering that: a) the management already have a bar and restaurant 7 miles away at The Old Bell Hotel, b) the high overhead costs and low profitability involved in competing in the rural restaurant and bar market, The provision of a public facing bar and restaurant adds too much risk and cost pressure to the business model and proposed scheme.

Our proposal for The Greathouse would allow for the creation of a substantial number of local jobs:

• Management and Operation House Manager Accounts Manager Business Development Manager

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Events Manager • Housekeeping Housekeepers x 3/4 (Housekeeping Manager Shared with The Old Bell) • Kitchen Kitchen Team x 3/4 (Head Chef Shared with The Old Bell) • Front of House Staff Core waiting and Event Staff x3/4 (Overflow staff shared with The Old Bell) Numerous flexible part time roles to assist in service. The remaining staff required will be shared with The Old Bell. • Grounds and Maintenance Staff Maintenance x 2 Grounds and Gardens x 1

The Greathouse will employ a core of 16-19 staff members with a number of roles rotating between The Old Bell and The Greathouse, as well as a number of flexible working opportunities available in service.

The detailed justification for The Greathouse proposal is as follows:

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Accommodation

The Hotel at The Greathouse will focus itself towards high quality business and leisure bed and breakfast travellers and create 12 bedrooms. The Greathouse will seek to run at high occupancy by engaging with a number of key corporate contracts, many of whom already use The Old Bell Hotel, as well as tourists travelling to Bath, Bristol, and The Costwolds.

The Old Bell Hotel has 35 bedrooms and runs at around 77% occupancy which is roughly in-line with average hotel occupancy in Wiltshire. 19 bedrooms are located in the main building, and 15 are in the ‘Coach House’ which is a modern extension overlooking the car parks.

When isolated from the rest of the hotel, The Coach House (due to it’s popularity with business travellers) runs at 87% occupancy through most months of the year. This is substantially above the average occupancy in the county and the rest of the hotel.

Our more ‘leisure focussed’ main house bedrooms only run at 66% occupancy for the majority of the year, and due to the leisure focus of guests looking to book the main house, these bedrooms are substantially more expensive than the bedrooms in The Coach House.

The Old Bell Hotel has limited capacity to create more corporate focussed bedrooms, and subsequently The Greathouse provides us an opportunity to nearly double our bed and breakfast focussed hotel room stock within Wiltshire.

The Greathouse (THG) will provide accommodation to meet a 4* standard across three categories:

• Two ‘Master Bedrooms’ which will be substantial in scale and overlooking the southern gardens making use of the Edwardian bay windows. • Six ‘Large Bedrooms’ which all have generous en-suite bathrooms, attractive mullioned windows and plenty of period character. • Four ‘House Bedrooms’ which are all of a good size, however their en-suite bathrooms will be more compact, making them our most affordable bedrooms.

The rooms will be designed to a 4* standard, with extensive in-room facilities and high-speed connectivity in order to appeal to our target customers who value comfort and convenience over the traditional hotel facilities. After check-in, guests will have access to seating areas in ‘The Salon’ and the ‘Hotel Reception’, the rest of the hotel will be shut off unless there is a private hire event.

The provision of food when staying on site will be in the form of room service, and breakfast will be a served in the ‘Central Hall’ which will be the heart of the Main House. This vaulted room will have a mixture of dining space, as well as a ‘hidden bar’ which will service the conferences and private events in the Main House on a day-to-day basis.

The Greathouse will also suit leisure travellers with the M4 nearby, its proximity to Bath, Bristol and The Cotswolds, and with the increasing promotion of The Great Western Way bringing tourists out of London.

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Conferencing & Corporate Retreat

For many years now, the corporate market for bedrooms, meetings and conferences have made up the larger share of the turnover of The Old Bell Hotel when compared with leisure guests.

In 2018, The Old Bell Hotel Hotel invested in fully refurbishing the two main conference and meeting rooms, and this has had an immediate positive impact. In 2019, the hotel is on target to grow its conference business by over 35% (when compared with 2018) by hosting 125 conferences to local businesses which is a real success story.

Yet the hotel has to reject enquiries for larger conferences and meetings due to the limitations imposed by it’s 66m2 Garden Room, which is the largest available space for conferencing in the hotel. We have always had ambitions to attract larger meetings, but this would require extending existing buildings on our site.

In 2015 the hotel succeeding in being granted planning permission for an extension to The Garden Room and the development could have more than doubled the existing capacity to 150 guests, however the proposal would entail building over much of the upper terrace which provides an important space for food & beverage sales, private events, and corporate break out space.

The hotel also faces further challenges such as:

- The car parking on site is already limited (with only 30 spaces), so increasing the capacity of our events would put a huge strain on parking provision for our leisure guests and diners. - To create more than the existing two meeting rooms would entail either losing a valuable bedroom or losing more hotel lounge spaces, which are integral to our leisure guests customer experience.

We no longer feel the consented proposal is a balanced when looking at business as a whole, but we have a substantial need to expand and provide more flexible and modern conferencing facilities in North Wiltshire, and our proposal at The Greathouse can facilitate this.

Historically, the hotel has also had great success when it has hosted Corporate Private Hire events for large multinational businesses such as Disney who have used the entire site as a corporate retreat. These events can command substantial revenues, but the setting and historic reputation of the business as a hotel, bar and restaurant mean The Old Bell Hotel, (and many other similar hotels) have to forego this lucrative market and never close to the public.

Our proposal for The Greathouse will be able to overcome these issues and offer maximum flexibility and have a broader appeal for business-users:

• Day Conferencing – providing meetings for up to 20 people within the Main House (ranging from 2 hours to all-day) for local businesses who do not require exclusive-use. • Exclusive-Use Main House Conferencing – providing private corporate meetings from 6 to 20 guests in the Main House, making use of the lounges, meeting room and main Hall as required. • Exclusive- Use Corporate Retreats – Offering single day or residential corporate retreats to businesses who wish to take advantage of the whole property, as well as the extensive grounds for single days or residential stays and make use of the studio spaces, swimming pool, grounds, and treatment rooms for indulgence and relaxation.

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• Product Launches – Businesses who wish to use our extensive and flexible spaces for product launches and marketing events. • Filming Location – Our high-quality renovations, domestic feel, and flexible and private spaces will make The Greathouse perfect for both filming, and hosting film-crews working out of The South West. • Studio Space – The large rooms in the Function Space will also be available for hire as studio space and for photography shoots. With Bristol being only 25 minutes away and a hub for the creative arts, The Greathouse will seek to promote the hotel as a flexible creative space.

The targeted focus of our in-house kitchen will deliver sustainable, locally-sourced, creative food and beverages to our guests, specifically delivered to the style and format of your meeting or event. We will be able to deliver anything from food boxes ‘to-go’ to a 5-course tasting menu with wine pairings for 150 guests, whilst making use of make use of the kitchen garden to reduce the carbon footprint of the business.

The Schedule of Accommodation for corporate private hire at The Greathouse is as follows:

Name Size Available for: Meeting Room 38m2 Board meetings (Main House) Small meetings Private Dining Break-out Space The Central Hall 65m2 Medium sized meetings Private Dining Dining and Bar 148m2 Board meetings Small meetings (2 - 20guests) Medium and Large Meetings (20 + guests) Private Dining Break-out Space Meeting Room 68m2 Board meetings Medium Sized Meetings (10-40 guests) Private Dining Break-out Space Studio Hire Function Room 155m2 Large Meetings (40+ guests) Studio Hire Exhibition Hire Product Launches Auctions Salon Bar 50m2 Break-out Space Lounge 48m2 Break-out Space

This level of flexibility, when combined with fantastic food and drink, will create one of the most exciting facilities in Wiltshire for conferences and events, and The Greathouse and The Old Bell Hotel can seamlessly share staffing and infrastructure in order to offer the highest standards of service.

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Private Events

The layout of the proposed hotel has been meticulously designed to create a flexible and bespoke offering for a variety of private hire events; from private dining and small-sale private hire as well as larger parties, functions and weddings. Once again, we have used what is most successful at The Old Bell Hotel to inform our proposal for The Greathouse.

Over recent years The Old Bell Hotel has been successful in this market in spite of many of the same structural limitations which limit its ability to expand its corporate revenues.

1) The car park is an issue, as we have 30 parking spaces, but these also have to be shared with restaurant and bar guests, as well as residential hotel guests, and staff parking, meaning that any function booked at the hotel has limited parking options. This is frequently highlighted as an issue for our customers. The proposal at The Greathouse is to create 51 customer parking spaces as well 7 separate staff parking bays. The bed and breakfast focus of the accommodation also means that any private hire will be unlikely to clash with our hotel guests.

2) As The Old Bell is open to the public 7 days a week from 9am-12am, it is a challenge to allocate spaces within the hotel towards lucrative private hire events outside of the two main meeting rooms (Garden Room and Library). At The Greathouse, (as we will not have a public facing restaurant or bar), all of our spaces will be available for a variety of private hire uses:

- lunch parties and afternoon teas. We can offer flexible dining across the ground floor of the main house depending on the customers’ needs. This product is ideally suited towards birthday lunches, anniversaries, and other parties. We will market ourselves heavily towards the local community

- Private dining. We can offer an exclusive-use private dining offering where a party could take the main house for an extraordinary private dining experience across the ground floor (with the Function Space closed off) as well as some/all of our bedrooms. Depending on the guest numbers we can open up and close off rooms to suit the customer’s requirements.

- Wakes. Wakes are often disruptive to our leisure guests at The Old Bell and are challenging to mesh with our day-to-day trade. In creating The Greathouse we will be able to offer a space which is much more private and intimate than a ‘traditional’ hotel allowing our staff the time and flexibility to deliver truly memorable celebrations of life.

- Luxury Tours an Event Stays. The Old Bell has a number of connections with Luxury Tour operators who bring tours to The from primarily North America and Asia. These parties are usually seeking between 6 and 15 bedrooms at a time, so The Greathouse is ideally suited to offer exclusive-use stays to Luxury Tours. The status of The Greathouse as a heritage building, along with it’s proximity to Stonehenge, Bath, The Cotswolds, and London (via the M4) make it ideal for groups looking to experience the South West of .

- Yoga, Health & Fitness classes. The Meeting Room in the Function Space will be a flexible space which can accommodate fitness classes and yoga classes for the guests and visitors to The Greathouse, and the local community.

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- Shooting Parties. With extensive sporting and shooting estates in Wiltshire and The Cotswolds, The Greathouse is ideally suited to offer 24/48-hour private hire to shooting parties through the season (which usually number 10 guests). The proximity to Kemble airfield also allows for international guests visiting The Cotswolds to easily access this bespoke accommodation. We have been successful at offering private hire to shooting parties at other sites within our group, but with 35 bedrooms, it is difficult for The Old Bell to facilitate these sorts of events, however a smaller unit like The Greathouse will be far more successful.

3) The Old Bell also struggles to maximise the available revenues from weddings and private parties due to the limited size of the suitable rooms. The main restaurant is the largest space within the hotel; however, its capacity is still limited to 80, and this space needs to be available for public and residential hotel guests.

The capacity of The Garden Room is limited to 65 which is substantially lower than the average guests at a wedding with around 85 guests which means the appeal of The Old Bell Hotel for weddings is very limited. The Greathouse proposal provides a vastly more flexible function room with capacity to seat up to 150 guests.

The wedding market can offer significant revenues for The Greathouse, and the opportunity to offer exclusive-use will provide substantially greater revenues than The Old Bell can command.

4) The Old Bell’s quantity of bedrooms and limited site area mean it is unable to provide many of the facilities required by the Luxury Private Hire market. The Main House at The Greathouse, will have twelve bedrooms as opposed to thirty-five at The Old Bell, and unlike The Old Bell Hotel, The Greathouse can also provide multiple private dining and lounge areas, studio spaces, treatment and spa facilities, as well as a Swimming Bath, all of which mean it is perfectly suited to luxury private hire.

There is increased demand from London for experience-driven rural hotel stays, so the ability to exclusively hire your own boutique hotel, will be able to command a significant premium, especially during peak summer as well as Christmas and New Year.

Conclusion

The proposal for The Greathouse is a well-considered business model which has been informed by sixteen years of trading at The Old Bell Hotel.

Our vision for this site is to offer a sustainable and creative business, creating numerous new jobs, whilst allowing for the comprehensive and sensitive restoration of a Grade 2* listed building.

We hope for the support of the local community and Wilshire District Council in this endeavour.

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