ALTHOUGH his boss Peter Lederer is one of the UK's most renowned hoteliers, Patrick Elsmie is happy quietly getting on with the job of running one of Scotland's most iconic hotels. He took over as managing director of the Gleneagles Hotel from Lederer in November, when the latter became chairman. He had been running the hotel for 24 years.
Nick Rose, the chief financial officer of Gleneagles' parent company, Diageo, said they needed "someone at the helm" in the run-up to the 2014 Ryder Cup. Elsmie, who had been operations director beside Lederer, was the man to do the job.
Silver-
haired and slim, he enters the main bar of the grand old Perthshire hotel silently, although the waiter arrives at his elbow the instant he sits down. He won't eat lunch, but he assures me it is because he was just back from a weekend break where he played golf and ate "all of Aberdeenshire".
As the head of one of Scotland's most famous golfing resorts, it is unsurprising that he enjoys playing the game, although his weekends away tend to sound somewhat like a busman's holiday.
But he is trying to get some well-earned down time before going to Las Vegas for a travel trade convention. The exhibition is run by Virtuoso, a membership organisation of 400 travel agents specialising in luxury travel. Members book £2.3 billion worth of holidays and Elsmie wants some of that coming Gleneagles' way. "We make a presentation to a travel agent every four minutes for seven hours a day for four days," says Elsmie of the conference. "At the end of it most people have difficulty speaking, some have difficult standing and some don't make it. It is a pretty gruelling experience. But a number of properties from Scotland are going to be there. It is something I have done for a number of years. It is good to go and it creates relationships as well."
Relationships with travel agents to the global jet-set are essential and although Elsmie might let his underlings carry the strain of working the room as he takes a more executive role, he is not yet ready to let go entirely. "I am being more disciplined, but certain sales marketing relationships are ones I have maintained because they go back a long time," says Elsmie.
"The great thing about the hotel business is it is something you enjoy. It is hard work, but if you love what you are doing, it is OK."
But ensuring agents are aware of Gleneagles' new luxury spa, the new suites and the upgraded golf courses are even more important now the global tourism market is hitting a rough patch. Elsmie expects the American tourism market at Gleneagles this year will be surpassed by Europeans for the first time. Business is tough.
"We are marginally down on last year, one must not underestimate this is a more difficult year than 2007," says Elsmie, although Gleneagles' traditionally well-heeled visitors respond to the credit crunch in different ways than the average person might.
"As with all things that are discretionary spends, people now have to think twice about what they are going to spend money on. It is not 'do I cancel?' but perhaps 'do I do four days instead of five?'. 'Do I come twice instead of the three times I usually come?'
"Also, the reality is companies are reviewing how they spend money. Our business-orientated groups here at the hotel are really on a par with last year, when I had hoped it would be more."
Business may be down, but by how much Elsmie does not reveal. Diageo does not say in its accounts what Gleneagles makes in terms of profit or turnover. Although Gleneagles is important and is among one of Scotland's most successful resorts, it is a small part of the group's annual £8 billion turnover.
It makes a change for Elsmie, who has worked for some of the most exacting and successful five-star hotel companies in the world, including Mandarin Oriental, Orient Express and a stint as general manager of the Old Course Hotel in St Andrews.
During his time at the Old Course, the hotel was owned by Japanese investors who struggled to make good on ambitious plans for a timeshare development. Now the hotel is owned by a billionaire American industrialist and those plans are finally going ahead under its new managing director, Debbie Taylor.
"The owning company in my day were looking for ways to extract value from that building," says Elsmie diplomatically. "And planning took longer than we liked – planning with a small 'p'."
Diageo is different. As owner of the resort for over 25 years, Elsmie does not have a carte blanche approach to spending, but there is a sense the group supports the hotel management in doing for Gleneagles what the resort needs to keep its status.
"There has always been a good understanding between Gleneagles and Diageo. We have been delighted with the support Diageo have given us, the support to do as we see fit for the business, to keep (it] moving forward," says Elsmie. "In many ways, there is a great synergy between the drinks company and the hotel that is fairly obvious. You merely have to look around," he says gesturing to a bar well stocked with Talisker and Johnnie Walker.
Gleneagles is also home to the Diageo-sponsored Johnnie Walker Golf championship that just finished this weekend. It is also useful that when the company has dignitaries or VIPs visiting it has a nice little gaff in which to put them up.
The big focus now for Gleneagles is the 2014 Ryder Cup, the biennial competition between PGA European and US golfers. It will be a big year for sport in Scotland along with the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
Elsmie reckons by the time the event starts, the company will have spent about £18m upgrading the facilities, although he suggests this is also the level of investment required to keep itself on the right side of luxury. The new top-end Espa spa is a change from its previous facilities, once unkindly likened in a national newspaper to a sports centre in Cumbernauld.
Its most recent innovation, the gun-dog school, was not quite so expensive but is popular with guests. "It is another hook to make people think of what is different in Gleneagles. I think our guests expect, if they come back on an annual basis, something will be new. It doesn't have to be enormous, but it is a change nonetheless."
Although he is careful to say Gleneagles isn't the home of the Ryder Cup, he points out the resort is at the root of the competition's history. The first official match played between an American and a British team was in 1921 on the resort's Kings Course. The British won. A few years later, a seed merchant named Samuel Ryder donated a prize and the rest is history.
Elsmie sees a successful Ryder Cup event as part of something that might become his legacy. "If I look back on my time here some years from now, I would like to think I have been able to oversee Gleneagles during a time the hotel continued to be held in high esteem and the value of the business was growing, and to deliver a Ryder Cup that will be elegant. That I would see as being special and it rests on my shoulders to deliver."
BACKGROUNDPATRICK Elsmie graduated from the hotel course at Oxford Brooks University, although it was then known as Oxford Polytechnic.
The UK in the 1970s was no place for the hotel industry so he invested £100 in a one-way ticket to Hong Kong. He worked his way around Asia for nine years, working with the Mandarin Oriental Hotels group in Hong Kong and Thailand.
After a year in Antigua, Elsmie returned to the UK and spent five years in his first job with Gleneagles. But Peter Lederer was not then ready to relinquish his job and, hungry for more experience, Elsmie went to South Africa to run a golf resort for Orient Express.
Returning to Scotland, he became general manager of the Old Course Hotel in St Andrews for five years, then in 1999 he returned to Gleneagles as operations director and general manager.
Elsmie reflects: "I have been really lucky in that I have been able to bring up my family in one home, here in Auchterarder. But I have been lucky in my life to have travelled to some fascinating parts of the world."
