By Dave Hunter
Continual reinvestment and adaptation has been core to the success of SLTN Award-winning business SimpsInns.
The company, which last November was named SLTN Family-Owned Business of the Year, was founded by husband and wife Malcolm and Karen Simpson in 1996, with sons Lee and Jack now also in senior positions in the business.
Operating four venues – three hotels and a restaurant – all within a few miles of each other in Ayrshire, the company always has a project underway as it looks to refine and improve its offer.
The group’s Loans Inn sits on the outskirts of Troon, while The Waterside is in West Kilbride. Both The Gailes hotel and The Potting Shed restaurant are located near Irvine. A fifth site, The Riverside, near Ayr, is currently closed and will be refurbished and reopened later.
In the last year projects have included a £150,000 investment in solar panels at The Gailes hotel near Irvine as well as the addition of 17 new bedrooms at The Waterside Hotel in West Kilbride.
When SLTN caught up with Malcolm and Lee at The Waterside, the company was nearing completion of a new spa facility at the hotel which was to include six treatment rooms, sauna and steam room and spa lounge. At the same time, refurbishments of rooms at The Gailes were also underway.
The spa project is the latest stage in a pivot towards the leisure sector that the company has been making in recent years, and which has already seen a spa installed at The Gailes.
The construction of the new facilities at The Waterside has represented a considerable investment from the company, but Malcolm – who won the SLTN Industry Achievement Award in 2022 – explained that having different facets to the business has been essential as customer demand shifts.
“Leisure is a big part of our business. It started off as food and drink, then rooms became a big part, events became a big part,” he said.
“Spas are a significant focus. Between the bedroom extension here and the spa here is a £3.5 million project. It’s a really big investment.
“It’s quite a challenge to keep all the plates spinning, but in the current – or any – environment, something is always up and something is always down, so we always hold our own.
“Food and drink is a tough, tough game at the moment. However, we have other parts of the business that are doing really well for us. Sometimes that changes around. I would say it’s more challenging to juggle it and keep it going. However, it works for us. So moving into fitness and leisure was a big (thing) for us. We made that decision three or four years ago.”
The addition of the spa to The Gailes helped boost revenue at that venue, and the family is confident it will do the same at The Waterside, helping to turn the hotel into more of a resort and boost trade even at traditionally quieter times of year.
“We are pretty obsessively reinvesting,” said Malcolm.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a year we’ve not had a project on”
“It’s easy just to say ‘we’re here’. But I don’t think there’s been a year we’ve not had a project on, whether it be refurbishing or growing. But you have to commit and reinvest. And it’s the hardest money in the world to spend, because it’s not necessarily going to elevate you, it’s to stop you slipping. But we’re all committed to the same thing.”
Having all four family members in the business helps to keep projects progressing.
While Malcolm and Karen oversee the business overall, sons Lee and Jack focus on operations and renovations, respectively.
“It has let us fast-track quite a few projects,” explained Lee.
“We did a big refurb at The Loans at the start of last year, and Jack managed that mainly with our own internal team to do the vast majority of it.
“It’s let us tick off some boxes when previously we might have had to rely on the timeframes of external contractors.
“We’ve been able to keep the properties up to a high standard and The Gailes bedrooms were probably just reaching that point where they were the last piece of the whole puzzle at The Gailes that needed a bit of time.
“Once we’ve got that boxed off, which should be done in the next three months, then all levels of The Gailes – the restaurant’s been refurbed, the spa’s been done, the function suite’s been done – so everything will now be at a higher level.”
The next major project for the company will be the refurbishment of The Riverside Inn near Ayr, which has been shut for several years.
Malcolm said the family has a three-to-five year roadmap for where they want the business to be, setting and updating targets as they go.
And outside of projects and expansions, there’s the day-to-day business of keeping costs in line and running as efficient an operation as possible.
Lee explained that the company has invested in new systems to manage rotas, in addition to the solar panels at The Gailes (which should bring energy bills down around 30%).
“We’re also quite fortunate because we are quite a contained group, so that if one venue’s getting hit and another’s quiet, we’re able to quite easily move between the venues, which if we were more spread out wouldn’t be as possible,” said Lee.
“Other than that it’s just, every month, looking at our cost lines and seeing what is costing money and what can we chop and change or what can we live without. Just being selective about what’s needing to be done and what’s nice to have.”
