Then and now, 31st October 1992 and age 25, Balbirnie's new arriving GM, then fast forward 30 years!
By a considerable timeline, I am also now our company's longest serving employee 😍
5 years ago today, I published a blog about our first 25 years of working at Balbirnie House, so if you wish to do so, you can read that article and then keep reading this one. Today, I talk about the last 5 years.
Well, how time flies! That's 3 decades of Balbirnie hospitality past in a flash! Here we are today after all these years, finding myself still in the Balbirnie House GM hot seat, but with the hotel now defined as 'Best Wedding Hotel', global category via Haute Grandeur, for the third time. What a remarkable hat-trick for Scotland!!! It is in all contexts absolutely incredible, and surely something that none of us will ever see happen again, for any other hotel in the world, ever?I can assure you, that we are so very honoured and it is so profoundly humbling for our brigade to be on the receiving end of these amazing awards, and knowing that today is never a dress rehearsal for tomorrow, it certainly drives one and all to keep doing our best.
Even more remarkably today, I actually get to work alongside the actual team who have delivered these most recent results! The collective philosophy remains the same, keep trying to do our absolute best in hospitality each and every day.
If you'd like to see a truly surreal quick 50 second clip from when Balbirnie won the first global wedding hotel award, click here.
My sincere thanks to everyone who I have had the pleasure of working alongside over the many years at Balbirnie House. So many people, and impossible to even begin to mention any individuals personally. Again, there are many of the team from the earlier years highlighted in this extensive 18 minute film summary which we issued for the first global award back in 2019. (Same intro as the quick clip above)
Marinique De Wet, Founder of Haute Grandeur global awards said to us at that year's awards dinner, 'Balbirnie House does things just a little differently'. Indeed!
Since starting at Balbirnie House I have always maintained the working ethos, that I work for our brigade, not the other way around. And in turn, we all work to do our best for providing our best hospitality to our extended local community and beyond. Both of these aspects have worked well.
GM - Generally Manage, General Manager. In 2005 I also took on the role of MD - Managing Director. Manage the Directors! Company directors of course have all legal obligations and responsibilities of running our Limited company.
Writing back in 2017, who could have predicted what would happen in hospitality, in the next 5 years? From Balbirnie's perspective we were certainly on a great roll in 2017 with 'business as usual' from 2017 ongoing until March 2020, at which point we arrived at the pandemic lockdown.
When I say 'business as usual', that doesn't mean that we've ever arrived at a point whereby we can say anything about it has ever been easy. We've never stopped trying to skip any part of the hospitality struggle, because that's of course, where the character of what we do is made.
Little did we know on the night that we closed on 20th March 2020, anticipating it would perhaps be for a few weeks at most, but we would end up being locked down all the way until 6th July, in that process taking a £1M financial hit. Many hotels and special events venues will be remembered for how badly they handled the circumstances, especially in relation to weddings. Our approach to the eventual contrary was basically, for our wedding planning department to do everything we could possibly do, to help each and every client. Most thankfully we were also able to subsequently financially re-construct and keep on going.
When we did re-open in July 2020 it was only with 10 gazebos outside, and what an epic summer we would then find ourselves in. We had said on social media, 'There are only a dozen of the team here, we can only bring more colleagues back to work if we are busy!' Very quickly we found ourselves catering for 200 to 300 dining guests per day in those 10 garden gazebos, the public support defied belief. Our sincere gratitude as always. Each time we were able to bring another colleague back to work, all those on duty went to the front steps and applauded our incoming colleagues back into the hotel.
I didn't know it then, but apart from a few days of sanity holiday break in late autumn 2020, I wouldn't take a single day off work for the next year. More aptly stated, I couldn't justify taking a day off until we could re-stabilise what were still nevertheless very severe ongoing financial losses. Winter 2020 saw us shifting the garden gazebos into our Millennium Ballroom. Then the hospitality sector got banned from serving alcohol inside, so we opened Courtyard al Fresco outside for winter. What an adventure all round.
In late December 2020, the next nightmare, when we had another stark choice, 'Close completely again, or become a Takeaway!' As I saw it, a chance to keep the house heated, water running, and fully secured 24 hours per day, so Takeaway it was.
Memories of a Lifetime with what then happened. Public support yet again defied belief. Once again, our sincere gratitude as always.
Throughout the apex of all ongoing pandemic challenges and restrictions, our management team were empowered to transform the impossible into what is possible, upon reflection we certainly did everything we could to maintain all momentum to keep Balbirnie on track for the full re-opening. The simple truth is that great teamwork was at the heart of all that was achieved through those difficult times.
Onwards we went, helping one wedding client after another with ever-changing dates. In February 2021 we constructed financial year budget beginning 1st May 2021 and all was looking good ahead, only however then to find that we had truly severe trading restrictions placed on everything through May, June, July and the first third of August 2021. We kindof got going again through autumn 2020, then the government told everyone once again, not to go out for any festive celebrations. Hundreds of our guest bookings cancelled overnight.
Fast forward to today, and Balbirnie is back to 'normality', and the rest. We are providing the backdrop for almost 200 weddings in calendar year 2022, and 2023 is looking truly amazing as well. Our entire hotel brigade is being remunerated at base level rates above national minimum wage, and that's in industry-leading contexts also regardless of age. Unlike many hotels elsewhere, we are completely, fully staffed, with a waitlist of 150 individuals as well. Early in 2022 we joined industry colleagues, having firstly very carefully researched and noted that the new digitalised service charge systems are certainly now applied industry-wide, in defining a 10% discretionary food and beverage service charge, to replace the previous system of cash gratuities. All aspects integrated and considered, we can confirm that summer 2022 has seen our best ever brigade retention and consistency.
It is also fair to say, and I don't say this lightly when reflecting on all the amazing contributions which have been made by so many individuals to Balbirnie's journey over the last 3 decades, but I feel that our management team is currently perhaps at its strongest and most consistent in history.
Human Resources? Headed up by Rebecca Harper who has had 6 years working here, over recent years we have invested in converting all aspects of Human Resources into becoming digitalised across the entire span of 115 individuals in the team. From convenient and easy initial Zoom interviews, to contracts via Docusign, 80 page digital company Constitution, and then into training modules via Flow. It's slick, fast and efficient. Working hours are recorded via digital fingerprint time-keeping. Moving into my next decade, an absolute priority will be on ensuring that our Flow training is delivering the absolute best we can, in terms of world class training and inspiration.
Remote guest check-ins on mobile phones. Nearly every single reservation digitally-automated. All of this is a world away from 1992, when everything was done manually. I think that today, technology has therefore created more capabilities for us to focus on hospitality.
In the interim, the last five years of accumulated global awards recognition have been simply incredible to see. Each time something unexpected has happened therein, we've not changed anything, we've simply kept on doing what we do.
Interviewer : 'Mr. Russell, what attracted you to the hospitality industry?'
Nicholas : 'In a word: pleasure. It's like, my pleasure in other people's leisure!'
Through 2022 at Balbirnie this year, we are seeing remarkable circumstances with in-house records being broken one after another, for future wedding bookings. I can absolutely assure you dear readers, that such contexts are driving us as ever before, to do absolutely everything we can, to maintain great value for guests, to keep Balbirnie House continually looking at her best in history (whilst we contend as always with usual significant wear and tear), and to ensure that our hotel brigade is completely fully equipped, totally motivated and driven to do our absolute best in hospitality, on each and every unique day. That's how 3 decades have been delivered, one very special day at a time.
Our next interior design project is now confirmed and in progress, it's The Orangery Gallery next up, providing a beautiful new entry to the Orangery itself, as well as leading through to our Millennium Ballroom. This is being designed around the artwork of Archie Forrest, Scotland's leading contemporary Colourist painter. This project will finalise in the first two weeks of 2023.
Archie Forrest: 'Plum Tomatoes'
Our many blessings counted as always, and thanking my lucky stars that I am married to my very lovely wife, fellow company director Gaynor, and we have a shared vision of what we are working with today at Balbirnie House. As friends all know, whilst I am technically the boss of Balbirnie, I always highlight that LOL my wife is in actual fact, the real boss. This has been confirmed in this lovely article a few days ago in The Courier.
These last 5 years I've certainly been busier than ever before. Ending in 2020, five years spent voluntary for Scotland reporting on emerging capabilities to embrace the future blockchain democracy revolution, that was a hobby which became so much more. And as for continued progress with wellness, wellbeing, fitness and very specifically somehow finishing four Ironman races in my fifties, representing our amazing, local, friendly and inclusive Glenrothes Triathlon Club, well anything is possible. To do that I have now surpassed 2,000 Strava training sessions. I'll deliver two further blogs on these niche subjects in the next few weeks.
Finally for today, I'd like to say a huge congratulations to our daughter Isobel, who has just passed her theory driving test with an amazing result, and is now working in our kitchen brigade as a chef in The Balbirnie Bistro.
Onwards we go, into my fourth decade of hospitality at Balbirnie House.All best wishes,
Nicholas
MD Balbirnie House
