Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire-based owner-operator Starboard Hotels has submitted plans to add a four-floor, 71-room extension to its 35-room Windermere Manor Hotel in Windermere, Cumbria. The hotel is in a protected national park with sensitive requirements and a legacy of providing a welcome for visually impaired guests.
The hotel sits inside the scenic, famed Lake District National Park. It's one of England’s most cherished leisure and vacation destinations, noted for its connections to writer and artist Beatrix Potter, the English Romantic Lake Poets — notably William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge — and guidebook writer and illustrator Alfred Wainwright.
The submission of Windermere Manor Hotel's plans to the Lake District National Park Authority for a four-floor extension might not be unusual in and of itself, but the hotel has a unique history and the site earmarked for the expansion includes a series of challenges and legal stipulations.
Paul Callingham, Starboard’s executive chairman, said his firm acquired the hotel from Guide Dogs for the Blind in Nov. 2017. Eight years ago, the charity decided to work with hoteliers to promote accessible vacations and guest stays for the visually impaired, rather than own and manage such hotels themselves.
Starboard pledged its intent to carry on that good work and to implement the hotel’s best practices in its other properties. The company's portfolio has 21 hotels comprised of 2,133 rooms that it independently runs or operates for Accor, Best Western Hotels & Resorts, Hilton, IHG Hotels & Resorts and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Its hotels are located across the United Kingdom in such destinations as Blackpool; Gatwick Airport; Greenock, Scotland; Leeds; London; Plymouth, and Sheffield.
Callingham said Starboard is “not aggressive purchasers, but if the right thing comes up, we are interested. Currently, we have refurbishments in the plans."
Principal among that work is adding new food and beverage and 28 guestrooms to the Holiday Inn Derby-Riverlights as it is converted into a 133-room Voco hotel, another IHG Hotels & Resorts brand. Starboard also is converting the 166-room Ibis Styles Birmingham NEC & Airport into an AC by Marriott hotel.
Twenty-four long-stay suites will be added to the Derby hotel, reflective of the area’s business and industrial demand, which includes car and engine manufacturers Rolls-Royce, Toyota and Volvo.
Stakes in the lakes
The Windermere Manor Hotel’s planning submission should be finalized by early next year, and then construction for the addition will take a further 18 months, Callingham said. It will be one of the largest hotel projects in the Lake District.
“Initially, we thought we would build a different hotel, but now we are obviously considering an extension. We’re pretty sure we’ve ticked the boxes, and I’ll be surprised if the plans are pushed back,” he said.
The property was built in 1850 as a private residence named Hammerbank for Herbert Coutts — a locally born artist and co-founder of the Lake Artists Society — and his wife Mary. On one wall on the property is a monogram with the initials HM for the couple.
After World War I, the Windermere Manor Hotel was owned by or donated to charitable organizations, including what is now known as the Lancashire Association of Boys & Girls Clubs. In 1996 it became a hotel, and a couple of years later a neighboring property, Low Brandle House, was added.
“My wife’s parents lived in the Lake District, and we were married there. I’d always thought I’d love to own some property there at some stage, so I always kept an eye on what was coming and going," Callingham said. “Then, we had the chance to buy it from Guide Dogs for the Blind, from which we also bought the [47-room] Cliffden Hotel in Teignmouth, Devon. These hotels are not part of our core portfolio, but they are wonderful properties.”
The Windermere expansion project has been planned for five years.
Callingham said the decision to carry on the work of Guide Dogs for the Blind came from not wanting to alienate any guest and because adaptations such as special coloring on the stairwells, Braille numbering, modified coffee mugs and dog-friendly areas — such as dog runs and dog showers — were already in place.
Starboard now works with local organizations such as Cumbrian Visions and Mountain Goat to help visually impaired guests plan transportation and excursions further into the Lake District.
“That just creates better hospitality,” he said. “And for training purposes we use Windermere as a base for our employee acceleration program, Shape."
Planning hurdles
Adding more than 70 rooms in such a sensitive destination comes with its own set of headaches, said Rob Ryan, Starboard’s director of operational real estate property. Starboard’s planning submission is in the public domain.
The 3.5 acres of land for the planned expansion is zoned to include 18 residences, Ryan said. Starboard originally planned to build and sell those immediately to housing associations, but that plan would have incurred a loss of £3.4 million ($4.6 million), Callingham said.
He added 75% of the residences were required to be “affordable,” and 25% were required for local residents to acquire.
Ryan said the sensitivity of the area required employment of local architecture companies using local materials.
“We’re also using local planning consultants. In a place like this, development is emotional. It is a pure leisure destination and there are no city-center-type brands,” he said.
Significant construction considerations existed, such as some of the site being on a slope and the presence of two streams and a sewer pipe.
There's also an ongoing treatment to kill off Japanese knotweed, an invasive plant species that can cause major physical damage to buildings and the presence of which often complicates the acquisition of insurance coverage. Ryan said the planning application with the LDNPA is a revision of what the authority requested but is the only way Starboard can make the project and the hotel viable.
Callingham said another sensitive issue is staffing.
“We have not been helped by our friends at Airbnb,” he said, referring to the alternative accommodation provider’s use of homes for tourism, not local residency.
“We can find staff, but they cannot find accommodation. We are driving people up from Lancaster, 45 minutes away, at astronomical cost,” he said. “That also influences room rates. These are great hotels but not hugely profitable ones. We’re building staff accommodation, but that will not solve that problem completely.”