Five Star General

After almost half a century as a hotelier Stewart Spence still starts every working day with a management meeting to discuss how they can do things better. It's a philosophy he believes should apply across the North-east if we are to improve our tourist offering at a time of a great opportunity.

Every day of his career as a hotelier Stewart Spence has challenged himself - "How can I do it better?

His current challenge is to improve his award-winning five star Marcliffe at Pitfodels by building a £50 million extension in its beautiful 11 acre grounds resulting in a 220-bedroom extension and additional meeting and function rooms.

His passion for the hotel trade began when he spent his school holidays in the Invercauld Arms at Ballater which was owned by a relative. Enthused by that he left school at 15 to join British Rail.

"Were you making the sandwiches?" his young staff now ask of his career development path, unaware that it is not so long ago that British Rail owned the finest hotels and restaurants in the land.

His training started in Aberdeen's Station Hotel and he worked in London and at Gleneagles before spending two years working at Fouquets on the Champs Elysées, Paris.

On his return to Aberdeen he worked at the Treetops, then ran the new Commodore Hotel in Stonehaven.

He and then wife Sheila were all set to accept job offers in Bermuda when father-in-law Dick Donald, the legendary Dons chairman, offered to back his purchase of the Atholl Hotel. He then bought the old Marcliffe Hotel in Aberdeen, followed by the Queen's, which became the New Marcliffe, then the Invery House near Banchory.

Eventually he decided to focus all his attention on his new hotel, the Marcliffe at Pitfodels, opened in 1993 by Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

One might expect the owner of the city's only five-star hotel to be less than enthusiastic about the possibility of Donald Trump building a rival five-star hotel on the other side of the city.

On the contrary he has been one of the most vociferous supporters of the Trump project and one of the first to point out it could be the greatest opportunity for the North-east since the discovery of oil.

"I see Trump in the north and us in the south, the five star establishments the area needs with everything in the middle developed alongside them," he said.

"I know the standard to which Trump does things and it ensures that everyone else has to raise their game.

"It goes from the top and the local authorities right the way through all businesses. We have to try to get everyone in the North-east to raise their game. We have a great area here but we must try and do things better."

He recently joined the Board of Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future (ACSEF) and has a key role and particular interest in encouraging Aberdeen City and Shire to adopt his business philosophy of continual improvement.

"We have good mix of people on board and we have a great opportunity," he says. "I like listening to Stewart Milne who is always saying that we are not planning for tomorrow and urging us to think ahead to the next generation.

"The main problem is a lack of continuity. Look at the Wood Group, for example, and why that has been successful - because the same man has been in charge of it for all these years. That is what we would like to see happening within the councils. We would love to see this long term planning. The idea of ACSEF was to get the private and public sectors working together and there is so much more of that happening now."

He believes the city and shire have a bright future as a global centre of excellence in the energy industry but believes it is vital to get the infrastructure in place to allow Aberdeen to flourish

"We need developments like the runway extension and the western peripheral route to happen in conjunction with the four major golf developments which are planned at the moment.

"These golf developments can totally put us on the map. I have always said we have everything we need in this area to make it successful, all we need is to be better at it."

He said it is wrong to see the Trump project as simply a golf development.

"People say ‘who is going to fill all these rooms? Who is going to golf in the winter?'

"What we are looking at is the worldwide conference market. That's what we are after. That's who will fill the rooms. Look what has happened to Gleneagles where only 15% of the people who stay there play golf.

"When I worked at Gleneagles it was closed for five months of the year and now it is a 12-month operation. At Turnberry they are spending £50million and these are not golf resorts in the winter. They become conference resorts and the Trump resort will be the biggest conference resort of its kind in Europe.

"We have not been able to have these conferences in the North-east because we don't have the hotels for them and they all want to stay in five-star hotels.

"Combine the exchange rate with Homecoming and this year is going to be a huge chance to put the North-east and Scotland on the market but we have got to give these people a good experience when they come."

As he moves to take the Marcliffe to the next level there can be no greater compliment than the letter submitted to the council objection to the development proposals.

A lady from Cults pleaded: "Don't let them change the Marcliffe - it's the only place in Aberdeen to go."