An interview with…

Richard Ball

Richard is the co-founder and Managing Director of The Calcot Collection, a group of three outstanding country house hotels in the UK, including the award-winning Calcot & Spa in the Cotswolds. A former Hotelier of the Year, Richard is one of Britain’s most highly regarded hoteliers and a celebrated hospitality philanthropist.

Proud Designers at Calcot & Spa for over 21 years

The early days

GS When did your journey in hospitality begin?

RB It came from my father, who trained as a hotelier in Switzerland. He never actually ran a hotel, he went into industrial catering at John Lewis, and then BP where he was a catering advisor across the world. But his real passion was hotels and wherever we’d go he would always stop for us to look at a hotel. We’d go in for a cup of tea or a meal and he’d be telling us how it all worked, pointing out the different members of staff and what they were responsible for. So I was brought up with a great enthusiasm for hotels.

GS Did you train in hospitality?

RB I did, but not at first. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I considered architecture and various other professions, but eventually I did go to Oxford Brookes and committed to a three year hotel management course. And I loved it! I really enjoyed the course, it was so varied and I learned so much. And that’s where I first met my wife, Cathy, as she was on the same course.

After the course, I knew that I wanted to work in hotels, but I was still young and there were other things I wanted to achieve. One of them was to work as a carer so I went into social work and spent a year with the Cheshire Foundation looking after physically handicapped people. Which I enjoyed very much and thought about social work as a career but I couldn’t get the right placement so decided it was time to go back into hotels.

Calcot & Spa

GS Was it easy to find work in hotels at that time?

RB Well as a part of my training at Oxford Brookes, I spent time working at the Hotel Ambassador in Paris and then at The Capital hotel in London, so I started knocking on a few doors, using the contacts I had made. I even got an interview with Ron Jones, who was the GM at Claridges at that time, to discuss my career. So I was confident that I’d find something but then my father approached me. He’d taken early retirement and decided he wanted to buy a hotel. His idea was to involve me and my sister, and he wanted us to help find a property in the country and to be involved from the start.

GS Was the idea conditional to you being involved?

RB I think they’d have done it without me, but they did want us involved so it would become a family business. I wasn’t sure at the time, but the more time I spent with them looking into it, the more I liked the idea. My father was willing to invest everything he had into it, so I knew how serious they were. They wanted to buy a hotel in the country, or to convert a suitable building into a hotel.

Eventually we stumbled upon an old farmhouse that was for sale, which was Calcot. It was perfect. The house itself was in fair condition although all the barns and stables were very redundant. Some were exposed, some had roses growing through the roof. They were very romantic, but in need of a lot of work. We thought we could start with the house, and then do one building at a time to let the business grow.

Calcot & Spa

The development of Calcot

GS Did you want Calcot to be like other hotels?

RB Well this was in the mid-eighties and the country house hotel scene had really only just begun. There weren’t many at that time although we did the circuit, to see what others were doing and to get inspired. We went to Ston Easton Park Hotel, and to Chewton Glen, and to Sharrow Bay. And a few others. They were what I would term now as quintessential country house hotels. That style of chintzy hotel is almost a thing of the past now. The buildings were usually unmodernised, with ancient noisy, plumbing and lots of draughts but they were comfortable and charming and the service was lovely. And it would be the hoteliers themselves who looked after you. They were particularly popular with American tourists. I think we wanted to be like them in the beginning.

GS Were you able to open the house straight away?

RB Not at all. There was a lot to do. It took us about eighteen months to turn the farmhouse into a hotel.

Calcot & Spa

GS Did you make many mistakes?

RB We were frankly very naïve at the beginning. We bought it without planning permission and had no idea whether we’d get planning consent at all! And it is an area of natural beauty so getting planning was always going to be an issue. My parents and my grandmother had sold their houses, so we’d put everything into this farmhouse. With very little left over to develop it!

My father had a promise from his local bank manager that they’d lend the money to get it open, but that didn’t materialize. The manager came to see the property and said that the project was too big for him to get involved. So the naivety was huge and there were times when we felt we’d made a big mistake!

But we did get planning permission. And the building work was done by my brother in law. My sister was already involved. And we all did as much as we physically could to help keep the costs down.

GS Once opened, was Calcot an immediate success?

RB We got a lot of early recognition. We won the Newcomers Award, and the AA Red Stars and we gained a Michelin Star. And we joined Pride of Britain so we had a lot of publicity and custom. Overall we had a good business.

GS The perfect family business?

RB It was for a while but then my father became very unwell and he wasn’t able to continue. So we decided to look for investment to help keep the business going. At that time we had a wonderful customer called Michael Stone, who stayed with us regularly during the shooting season as we were near to where he used to shoot. He’d bring guests from the shooting parties to stay too, so he was a really good customer. And one day I told him we were talking to a number of potential investors and he said ‘Why don’t you talk to me?’ So I did, and he became the major shareholder of the business, but I still kept my shares. My parents retired and Michael left me entirely in charge to get on with the business. We’d have regular board meetings but he hardly ever got involved.

Sadly, Michael died several years ago and his shares passed down to his son, Charles, who is also a super guy. Like his father, Charles has a great passion for the hotel business although he doesn’t get involved operationally. But he loves the hotel and loves what we’ve done, and is very happy to support it and our other two hotels.

The Painwick Hotel 

The Lord Crewe Arms

GS You have made several key changes to the hotel over the years. Some of which have been quite radical. Was it difficult to get approval from the Board?

RB Not really. The changes we’ve made have been strategic and directional. We knew that by the mid to late nineties, not long after a major recession, peoples’ tastes were changing. The chintzy country house hotel approach was tired. Fuss and complexity was out. Simplicity was in. So we did two things. First, we deformalized the dining and, in doing so, we lost the Michelin Star, which was a huge relief to all. And then we embraced the luxury family market.

We had a bit of capital at the time so we built a new bar that was effectively a pub, known as The Gumstool Inn, where you could get a great pint and good bar food. It became very popular with locals and with hotel guests, who loved the concept of having two very different styles of eateries to choose from.

Addressing the luxury family market, we started by converting just six rooms and we built a creche. That grew into a hugely successful part of the business and it became a major USP.

Calcot Spa

GS When did you decide to build a spa?

RB We planned it quite a long time before we built it. It was at a time when spas in hotels were becoming quite exciting. During our research we went to see several hotel spas. We went to Lucknam Park, which we thought was amazing, and we went to the Lygon Arms and we also went to see the One Spa in Edinburgh. We loved the whole spa experience.

At that time we felt that the country house hotel ‘offering’ was probably going to need something else and we had sufficient space to develop a really good spa. Spas were getting a lot of publicity and attention so we felt it was the right direction to take.

GS Did any of you have experience in running a spa?

RB No we didn’t. But when we started researching it, and going to different spas, my wife, Cathy, came with me. Cathy did have knowledge of skincare and products, and I knew nothing although we had a very good idea of what we wanted to create. When we started recruiting for a spa manager we just couldn’t find the right person so I suggested to Cathy, who knew more about what we wanted than anyone, that she should take on the role. Cathy was working with us at that time doing the company accounts. I said we could find another accountant but were struggling to find someone to run the spa, so it made sense for her to do it. And I think that was one of the best decisions we ever made.

Calcot Spa

GS It seems that the growth of the business was a combination of circumstance and good planning.

RB It has been organic growth. We’ve taken one decision at a time, focused on that, and then moved on.

GS Is Calcot today what you originally planned?

RB I’m often asked if there was a masterplan. The answer is ‘no’. When we started, nobody even talked about having a spa for example, and that is a major part of our offer today, but thinking back to those first few visits to this old farmhouse, right at the beginning, we saw the potential for growth because of the space. All of these barns and stables had so much potential, we just hadn’t figured it all out that that time.

GS What has been the biggest risk?

RB I think that my parents took the biggest risk when they bought the place and ploughed all of their money into it. But each decision we’ve taken since then to expand or change direction has been a risk. We try our best to weigh up the pros and cons, and to be analytical, but they all have involved an element of risk.

GS You also expanded the business by buying new hotels, like Barnsley House, The Painswick and The Lord Crewe Arms in Northumberland.

RB Barnsley House and Painswick were not a part of a plan. They just came on the market when we were in a position to invest. Barnsley House was a hotel that we knew well and loved. It’s a beautiful building in beautiful grounds and we felt it could offer guests something very different to Calcot. Whereas Calcot focuses on family stays and activities, Barnsley House could be quiet and peaceful, perfect for couples. We could see a differential between the two hotels, and that actually worked very well.

GS And the same thing happened with Painswick?

RB Pretty much. It came onto the market at a good price. It’s local and again, it’s different to Calcot. We saw that we could operate all three hotels from a single HQ, so we cancelled the expansion programme we’d planned at Calcot and poured our finance, and attention, and focus into those hotels.

GS So they were both risks.

RB Yes, of course. But I think I thrive on that. That’s when I’m at my best. I like a new  challenge and the risk that comes with it. In fact, there have been just a few occasions in my working life where everything appeared to be running smoothly and I found that I quickly became bored!

Images above and below taken of Barnsley House in 2010.  Photographer: Mark Bolton

“The hip, contemporary style for which this hotel is already known will be retained and enhanced, however a greater spotlight will now be placed on the heritage, setting and romance of the property.

“Without compromising its ‘edginess’, the hotel’s snappy appeal can be widened by making what already exists more elegant, chic and comfortable in order to become truly luxurious.”

Richard Ball, 2009, on the purchase of Barnsley House.

Painswick Hotel

Creating memories

GS What have you done to make the experience of staying at your hotels so unique and memorable?

RB I think there are common ingredients that go into making hotels memorable for guests. And I cannot claim that they’re unique. Firstly it’s about the team you employ. They’re all about the hospitality, the service, the welcome, and the atmosphere. They create the personality of the hotel. So our job is to make sure we choose the right people and guide them.

The atmosphere is crucial. The atmosphere in all three of our hotels is different and I love it that way, it means that each hotel has a different personality. This might sound like a small thing, but it undermines everything if it’s wrong. The atmosphere can make a hotel special or it can make it ordinary.

The second thing is about how we treat the spaces. How we work to create the spaces that convey the same personality.

GS Do you take your lead from the buildings the hotels are housed in?

RB Yes, we do. If you visit our hotels you’ll see that the Lord Crewe Arms is substantially different to Calcot, and so too is Painswick, although they do share a ‘red thread’. Much of this is down to another member of the Stone family, Charles’s sister, Nicky, who was responsible for creating our initial interior design direction.

Nicky had this lovely vision of how things should look and feel, that suited us perfectly. She understood what we were all about. Our interiors are comfortable and cosy, relaxed and unstuffy, unpretentious and natural. These are the things that Nicky does beautifully. So she set the design standards that we still work with.

GS But you do use other interior designers.

RB Nicky introduced us to her friend, Cathy Birtles, who has taken over the design at Calcot and at Painswick, and she is excellent. She knows how to make each space feel and look amazing. We used somebody else at Barnsley House, which has now been sold and runs under The PIG brand. And for the Spa at Calcot, and the new Grain Store, we use Beverley Bayes from SparcStudio, who is superb and knows all there is to know about spa and wellness design.

GS So it’s all about good staff and great design?

RB I think if you can get those two parts right then you’re probably 60% there. Of course it helps if you have a beautiful building, with lovely views. So you need to get the right property, that’s an important part of it. And lastly, it’s about the food. That has to be really good, with fresh ingredients, beautifully prepared and cooked, by talented and passionate kitchen staff.

The Hive bar & Restaurant at Calcot

GS You mentioned the importance of staff. Have you found that today’s employees are  different from when you started in the 1980’s in terms of their attitude to work.

RB Yes. Things are very different now and this is a problem that we’re still grappling with, along with the rest of the industry it seems. If one of us had a solution we’d all be jumping on it! Frankly, we look around at those who are coming into the industry now and we don’t see enough people who are one day going to be the senior managers and leaders to drive the hotel industry forward. Sadly, we’re not attracting the right sort of people, and the work/life balance seems to be top of the agenda.

GS Can you foresee a decline in the industry as a result.

RB Yes, I can. So I think something has to change, although we have seen some changes in recent years. What we pay now far exceeds what we used to pay. We’ve introduced flexible rotas, and we’re allowing four-day weeks where we can. So we’re trying to accommodate this work/life balance, but it’s a transitional thing, and we have to do it without letting our sale price go off the chart. What we have to do is to accommodate the changes, whilst remaining viable. And that’s hard.

GS  You were an advocate of a staff training initiative called the Ten Out Of Ten. What was that?

RB It was a training scheme that had ten students on it and they worked in ten luxury hotels, which included Calcot. The course was for two years and in that time the students would spend two months in each hotel, working in a different department. So every experience was different and at the end of it the students were totally engaged and well-versed in everything that makes a hotel tick! Those students really were of the highest calibre.

GS Did you employ any of them?

RB Yes, we did. We still do and they’ve been brilliant! I think that most of the Ten Out Of Ten students are still employed within the ten hotels, or in luxury hospitality.

GS But the scheme no longer exists.

RB Unfortunately, it doesn’t. It was very complex and difficult to administer logistically.  It ground to a halt during Covid, and it never started up again.

Cellar Bar at The Lord Crewe Arms

The Painswick, balcony view

Marketing & PR

GS Has the hotel embraced digital marketing?

RB It’s a significant part of our marketing now. In fact, across the three hotels, we spent a little over £100,000 on digital marketing last year. And that doesn’t include running our websites or Social Media.  We use a very good agency to manage it for us and we have a lot of faith in them to deliver. Every month we get a full statistical report which we study thoroughly and it is clearly very effective. We can see the results of the different digital campaigns, and we can see the spikes in traffic to the website, during each campaign. We can monitor our return-per-click, which is so clever. It’s amazing technology.

GS How else do you advertise the hotels?

RB We’re members of PoB (formerly known as Pride of Britain hotels) which we think is the ‘bee’s knees’. It’s really well run and a great thing to be a part of. And we’re currently looking at joining Small Luxury Hotels, for Calcot. At the moment we don’t do anything in the sales world or anything overseas, it’s all domestic. That’s worked well for us up to now but the Cotswolds are becoming more crowded, there’s more competition, and we need to work harder now to remain a presence.

The other thing we do is Public Relations. We do a lot of PR, which is crucial, and we use a very good company to handle that for us.

GS Have you always used the same PR company?

RB We’ve only used four or five since the beginning. We’ve been very lucky as they’ve all been good but this is an area where I think it’s important to look at through new eyes from time to time. So new agencies will come up with new ideas and help to keep it fresh.

GS Does the same apply with suppliers?

RB There are a few suppliers who we stick with, like our beds for example, we’re very particular about those, but where we appoint designers we usually allow them to select the products and we trust in them to do that. There was a time when we weren’t too concerned where the products came from, as long as they were good, but over the last two years we’ve started to take sustainability very seriously. We’ve gone through the EarthCheck process, we’re now at silver level, and as a part of the process we’ve become very concerned about the credentials of our suppliers. We make sure they’ve gone down the Fairtrade route where applicable, and ideally they haven’t used a lot of travel miles to get to us. We try to focus on suppliers in the UK, even if we have to pay a bit more.

Calcot room

GS What has been the most useful piece of advice you’ve been given in your career?

RB That’s difficult to answer as I’ve been given some great advice over the years but there is one thing that springs to mind immediately, because I say it to myself so often,  and that is ‘Listen to your staff.’ So many times we’ve been in the office grappling over a problem, it could be about pricing, changes to the menu, cleaning rotas or anything, but then I remember ‘let’s ask the team’, and they will inevitably throw some really important light on it. Because, after all, they’re the ones who are in touch with our customers every day, and they know what works and what doesn’t work operationally.

Hospitality heroes

GS Who do you admire in the industry?

RB I think that Robin Hutson is inspirational. And I’m sure that he’d be on many people’s list. I love Hotel du Vin and I love the PIG hotels, and Limewood is probably my favourite UK hotel. I think he has the Midas touch and his approach is very close to our approach to things. He’s just much better at doing it than I am!

I also admire Nick Jones of Soho House. I love his products and I know that he is completely behind them, over every detail. And what he achieved at Babington House was amazing. I think that was the gamechanger. Nick Jones was the one who looked at the country house hotel industry and said ‘let’s rethink this and think outside the box.’

And, finally, I’d have to say Harry Murray. A consummate professional, a gentleman, and a brilliant hotelier. He’s a very influential person in the industry and I think that if I ever needed some sound, professional advice then I would go to Harry first.

Calcot, lounge and terrace

GS Do you still lose sleep over business matters?

RB I do still stress over things. I lose sleep over emergency scenarios and I think that Covid has done that. It was a very stressful, tough time. And some of the decisions we had to make were hard. Before the government stepped in, there were times when we all thought it was over and we’d have to close the hotels. So that was traumatic, and it has left a bit of a scar. Even now I’m fearful of the phone ringing in the middle of the night to hear of some disaster. So the prospect of any kind of emergency scenario will always be a worry. I’m sure that applies to any hotelier. There’s so much responsibility and we’re responsible for so many people.

But I’m very fortunate that we have so many good people working here. We have excellent General Managers in all our hotels and they’ve been with us for years. In fact, all of the main management team have been here for at least ten years, some for nearly forty!

GS Do you still ‘muck in’?

RB Not as much as I used to, but whenever I do, I love it. And I end up asking myself, why don’t I do this more often?

GS You’ve been involved with various industry charities and organisations. Which of those are you most proud of?

RB I’ve enjoyed helping out. I chaired Pride of Britain and I chaired Master Innholders, but of all the industry things I did I’m most proud of is the support we’ve given to Hospitality Action over the years. I founded the South West Committee of Hospitality Action and we’ve organised events that have raised millions, so we’ve made a big difference there and it’s such a worthwhile cause.

Richard & Cathy Ball

GS Which hotel are you most proud of?

RB :  That’s like asking me to choose between my children! I love them all for different things. Calcot is where it all started , it’s the flagship and we’re really proud of the wellness offering and the Hospitality. Lord Crewe is so special and unique and the team make it stand out, and Painswick has such a great relaxed vibe – sorry, but I can’t make my mind up on this one!