Crerar Hotels Blog Page - Farming and the recession

Published: May 13, 2009

Well the summer upon us - thank goodness!

I hope never to see a winter like that again.

It seemed to me that never a day went by when more bad news poured out of the papers - it seemed never ending! Unfortunately I think there may be more to come but I also feel we, as people, now understand that much of the living some of society seemed to be enjoying was at a price that will never be repeated. Seeing the real effects of the economic contraction has been painful for us all but I take heart in the knowledge that humans and society are robust - we adapt quickly and we find new ways to live our lives to the full.

It seems that even in all of the gloom the UK consumer still understands the value of "down time" . As a hotelier this is welcome news, particularly as our cousins across the Atlantic are far too busy to travel this year and we have seen booking reflect a UK wide swing towards "stay home holidays" - we have had the busiest Easter on record and the main summer months are shaping up nicely. But and there is a very big but…..with the collapse of £ value it has also put the price of goods through the roof. For example the demand for Scottish Beef has increased by 100% since September - those that were buying imports are now buying home grown stock. This is great for the consumer and great for the Scottish Farmers who's beef is world class already - we just have to take the good with the bad on this …we would rather buy an expensive Scottish Steak , so we just live with it. The cost of beer …now that's an other thing but we have only our government to thank for that - I could go on but it will just make me fizz. Anyway what we have decided to do is treat bar drinks etc as a "service" ….we read the comments we were receiving on Trip advisor and it told us we were too expensive…ok …we got that wrong but what we have now reduced our selling prices after talking with our regulars to find out what they feel is fair.

Talking of Trip advisor - we have taken a bold decision! We now know that most people use Trip advisor as a tool to asses quality. So we have decided to use that as our number one satisfaction barometer….all of our hotel teams now have TA as their key performance indicator. This is a tough discipline…we used to say "we are only as good as our last breakfast" now we "say we are only as good as Trip advisors says we are" . And its quite right we should be brave enough to see what you think of us warts and all…and we must react to what we hear. So fingers crossed! This is a first step for our industry but I am glad to say, as a director of Visit Scotland, that the whole of the Scottish Tourism industry is really thinking hard about how we can use this type of customer feedback more effectively.

One last bit…..beef and lamb prices and quality. Pretty important to a company that sells 27,000 steaks every year. We have decided that this is an area we want to have full control on…and as a result I have bought a farm in the hills of East Lothian where I am building a herd of pure Highland Cattle, Luing Cattle and hopefully some Aberdeen Angus at a later point. We will also be carrying Black Faced sheep alongside some heavier framed sheep. The farm will take 5 years to get organic status and at that point it will also be capable of supplying Crerar Hotels with the quantity and quality it needs. This is now becoming my weekend job as you can see by the attached clip of me herding in some young heifers for their Blue Tongue jags , farming is obviously easy…..I have a hidden talent, deeply hidden!!!!

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