BUSINESS NEWS
Artist’ s impression of the new Apex City of Bath Hotel
Building Bath’ s future:
The redevelopment of James Street
Bath’ s largest hotel is in the making on James Street West, opposite the Green Park Brasserie.
Previously the DHSS building, Kingsmead House was derelict for eight years, before leading UK hotel group Apex Hotels decided to invest in the city. The development is costing £ 35million pounds to complete and is set to create 120 new permanent jobs and at least 20 more part-time positions. Apex secured a £ 29millon funding package from Lloyds Commercial Banking to build the four-star hotel, which will have 177 bedrooms over five floors when it opens in June 2017. The hotel will also provide Bath’ s biggest purpose-built conference centre, catering for events of up to 400 delegates. We met with Apex Hotels’ joint managing director, Yousif Al-Wagga to find out more about the project.
Bath Tourism
Leslie Redwood, Head of Business Development and Partnerships at VisitBath shares his thoughts on working together for the benefit of the city in 2017 and beyond.
Tell us a little about Apex Hotels... Apex is a family business. Owned 100 per cent by the Springford family. Mum, Dad and their three children. Ian the eldest of the three children is the chair. He also owns an architect firm, ISA. ISA are the sole architect on the project and are responsible for the design and project management of the build.
The middle son, David is a photographer and he shoots bespoke images for all of the properties. Teasing out the individual characteristics of each hotel.
The family first opened hotels in Edinburgh and Dundee followed by their first London hotel in 2005. The opening of the Apex City of Bath Hotel will bring the total number of properties in the group to ten.
I joined Apex in 2005 to open their first hotel in London, so have experience of opening hotels for the brand.
Why did Apex decide to invest in Bath? Bath has a lot of synergies culturally and commercially with our Edinburgh hotels. Also, Bath performs well statistically and is a safe investment. Plus, the opportunity to build Bath’ s largest hotel with purpose-built conference centre doesn’ t come up very often.
Who’ s the hotel aimed at? Midweek business tourism will be a key market for us with our bespoke conference facilities. The hotel will also be marketed to national and international guests. 64 of our bedrooms are perfect for families visiting the city, so we expect them to be extremely popular. All rooms will have a walk-in shower and bath, a Sky box, HDTV and free WIFI. Our premium rooms will also have extra amenities such as Nespresso machines. Some of the fourth floor bedrooms have balconies with views to the south and west of the city.
What facilities will the hotel have? Aside from the conference centre, the hotel will have a swimming pool, sauna, steam room and gym. The leisure facilities will be open to residents only. We are also building a terraced bar looking out onto James Street West with the restaurant running along the Charles Street side of the hotel.
Will there be any parking? A planning condition was that the hotel had no parking, but we do have access to a limited number of accessible parking spaces on the site.
Are you enjoying working on the project? This hotel is a labour of love for me. I was brought up in Batheaston and went to Kingswood School in Bath, so being part of such a huge project that will benefit the city is really exciting.
I’ m keen to forge strong relationships with the local business community. I’ ve already formed partnerships with Bath Rugby and Bath Rugby Foundation. Apex is also a member of Business West’ s Bath Initiative. We’ ve also welcomed some local firms on to the site for a tour and overview of what the hotel will be like once complete. We have also just signed up to the Bath College apprenticeship scheme investing in the hoteliers of the future. Apex is proud of its culture of nurturing talent and this is reflected in a bespoke apprenticeship scheme that we have introduced in Scotland
For more info: www. apexhotels. co. uk / bath-hotel
As we head towards 2017 and a changing world, I wanted to share a few personal thoughts on Partnership Working in order to benefit the city of Bath and region. Having worked to help set up the Bath BID from 2008 onwards, I now work with the wonderful team at Visit Bath for the benefit of our beautiful World Heritage site city and region.
Bath is a world class visitor destination and seeks to work with the highest quality partners and stakeholders in order to maximise the benefits of the visitor economy. I always work with a multitude of partners to give perfect synergy to this relationship for mutual benefit of us all in this uniquely lovely place.
Partnership working to Visit Bath and me personally is about equality, openness, respect, continuity and above all trust between all partners and stakeholders. It is my firm belief that this is the only way to get things done in our city.
The Bath brand is extremely valuable and vitally important to all of our futures – be that the local authority, businesses, residents or visitors. We all need to work together towards a joint strategic vision of the future for Bath- this will be the foundation that enables us all to add substantial value to the activities we undertake over this time, with shared, mutually beneficial aims and objectives. We should aim to share common goals with a programme of ongoing engagement allowing new ideas, better strategy, and an increase in value and credibility in the activities of us all.
This is my wish for 2017- A Happy New Year to you all.
For more info: www. visitbath. co. uk
Leslie _ Redwood @ bathtourism. co. uk
THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2016 5