FOLLOWING A RECENT £10M INVESTMENT INTO
A NEW SPA AND RESTAURANT, LODORE FALLS
IN THE LAKE DISTRICT IS FOCUSING ON DRIVING
OCCUPANCY LEVELS TO ENSURE THE HOTEL
IS PROFITABLE ALL YEAR ROUND. WE CAUGHT
UP WITH DANI HOPE, MARKETING DIRECTOR AT
LODORE FALLS, TO DISCOVER HOW THE NEW
ADDITIONS ARE IMPACTING BUSINESS SO FAR.C
an you give me a bit of background to the hotel?
Being hoteliers in the Lake District my parents, Kit and Charles
Graves, were well aware of the famous and prominent Lodore
Swiss Hotel, as it was called then, and had followed its splendid
reputation whilst under the ownership of the England family. When it
later on was purchased by a multinational hotel group, the hotel lost its
edge and became just another hotel and no longer had the warm and
welcoming hospitality that often goes hand in hand with family ownership.
It was a golden opportunity for our company, Lake District Hotels Ltd, to
approach the owners to find out if they would sell and the answer came back
that "the hotel was not profitable and in an area that had little interest to
the international hotel company". A deal was struck in 2004 and joined
Lake District Hotels Ltd and soon the hotel started to emerge yet again
as the "old" Lodore, but renamed Lodore Falls Hotel, with much needed
investment throughout including the ground floor and lounges and the 69
bedrooms and gardens. I joined the company in 2011 and one of my goals
was to improve our food offering across our hotels, launching a steakhouse
restaurant in our newest hotel, Inn on the Square, which opened in 2015,
and most recently Mizu Pan-Asian restaurant, which is the Lodore Falls
Hotel & Spas second restaurant.What was the driving force behind the decision to launch a
new spa?
Under the ownership of the England family, from 1947 to 1987, they had the
foresight, as one of the first hotels in England to build an outdoor swimming
pool and shortly after also an indoor swimming pool plus a gym and a sauna.
So the hotel was well prepared to welcome the emerging healthy living styleLODORE FALLS
Owned by: Lake District Hotels, a company owned and
operated by the Graves family.
Number of bedrooms: 87
New additions: May 2018 – pan-Asian restaurant, Mizu.
December 2018 – new Falls spa.
Total hotels in the portfolio: 6BUSINESS BUBBLES
FOR LODORE FALLS
and exercise regime in the 1970s/80s.
However, during the ownership of the
international hotel group no investment
to update the leisure club (as it was
then described) and outdoor pool was
forthcoming, so when Lake District
Hotels Ltd took over in 2004, the leisure
club was starting to look dated and an
immediate update was necessary to bring
it in line with the "new look" Lodore. In
2015 and with many other hotels in the
UK now offering a spa as a given, it was
decided that it was time to pull down the
old leisure club and outdoor swimming
pool and plan for a new spa. What started
out as an idea of a small new spa on the
existing footprint, bit by bit became aThe luxury new
swimming pool.34 BOUTIQUE HOTELIER | August 2019TALK LODORE FALLS