Advice From a Legend of the Industry - Bob O'Connor

If you've got any sort of interest in the hospitality and leisure industry, there's a good chance you'll be aware of Bob O'Connor and his work.

After starting his career in retail, he went on to develop an acute sense of what works and what doesn't when creating guest experiences. His most renowned project is Port Lympne Reserve, which he transformed from a business losing £3 million per annum to a hugely profitable resort in less than three years.

Simply put, he's a hospitality genius, and it was a privilege to chat with him for an hour. It's our longest episode yet, but we urge you to listen all the way through.

Points of discussion:

• How he got into the industry.
• How he turned Port Lympne Reserve around, from losing £3 million per year to a hugely profitable business in less than 3 years.
• Why you shouldn’t aim for 100% occupancy at your site.
• Advertising on the London Underground.
• His biggest failures.
• His most important mentors.
• The common mistakes he sees hospitality businesses making.

Links

• Visit Glampitect's website
• Check out Glampitect's Facebook page
• Take a look at Glampitect's Instagram page
• Visit Glampitect's LinkedIn page
• Join Glampitect's Facebook group
• Check out Port Lympne Reserve
• Take a look at Bob's website

Contact

• Email Glampitect: contact@glampitect.co.uk  
• Call Glampitect: 01312029002 

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Transcript

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Bob O'Connor: 0:08

I've worked through many recessions in the past. And there are those companies that when things get tough, they save money, they cut back cut back they cut back, where you end up saving so much money, you have no business. Or you can invest in your business and you can grow your way out of it. And that first year, we ran at over 88% occupancy that first year, and we kept it between 88 and 91% occupancy, or we just kept putting the price. Because if you fill everything every night, you don't have time to put things right that go wrong. How can you grow your business? You can get more people to come in, or you can get the people coming in to spend more, or you can cut your waste. Really that's the three ways to get more profit.

Nick Purslow: 0:59

Hello, and welcome to the Glampitect PODccast. Today I'm joined by Bob O'Connor, a man with decades' worth of experience in the hospitality and leisure industries. As you'll find out, he's been involved in a multitude of successful projects over the years, and he talks about his biggest successes, his biggest failures, advertising his site on the London Underground, his most important mentors and the common mistakes he sees hospitality business owners make. This is one of the favourite episodes I've recorded so far. It's so interesting, just hearing someone with such a wealth of experience talk about his successes and failures over the years. It's a long one today, but I urge you to listen to it all the way through. As ever, I hope you enjoy and that you find value in today's episode. Hi, Bob, you're a bit of a legend in the hospitality and leisure industry. So thank you for giving up your time coming on.

Bob O'Connor: 1:47

Well, that's very kind of you to say, I never thought of myself as a legend, been around a long time, so the longer you're around the more people know of you.

Nick Purslow: 1:55

So you've had a long career in the industry, how did you actually get into it?

Bob O'Connor: 2:01

Um, I always used to call myself a retailer because I started as a graduate trainee with Tesco. And I did that for many years. And then in the late 80s, I bought a pub in Devon and did that for a while. I got divorced, so the pub went. I went to work for Butlins because it was quite close, it was in Minehead. So my pub was in Devon. So it's like 35 minutes away. So we're keeping contact with the children and whatever. So that was the logic. It if I'm honest, I got into leisure, because geographically it worked for me. And they were looking for someone who had retail bars and catering experience. Well, I'd done retail, I was pretty sure on that. I've just done a pub. I didn't know very much about catering, albeit we did catering in the pub. But yeah, they thought that the two or three ain't bad.

Nick Purslow: 2:59

And so over the years, you've you've done a huge variety of unique hospitality projects. So could you just give us a run through of those please?

Bob O'Connor: 3:09

Sure. Well, if we talk about Butlins first of all, this was late late 80s. Butlins had rebranded itself, it will become what they called'worlds'. So I was at Summer Westworld, and there was Wonder Westworld, and there was Fun Coast World. So they changed, they thought Butlins had become old fashioned, so they rebranded it, and I was brought in to upgrade all of the bars, catering and retail. And they did that for four years. And the amazing thing was we took the turnover for the catering bars and retail business to over almost 60% of the total turnover the business. So we went from something like 75% of the turnover came from tariff and, the other 25 came from the secondary spend. And we switched that all around. And it would say over 60% came from our secondary spend and the other 40% came from from tariff. And that was really about just being innovative and doing things that nobody else had done. We built a shopping mall. No one had ever done that before. We brought in things that people had never seen on holiday. So in those days, there was something on the high street which is still there now, called Lush. And we had something called Apple Woods, which was Lush but under a different brand. So we tried to mimic the high street on the on the site. And the food offering really at Butlin's in those days was fish and chips burger and chips and fish and chips and burger and chips. So we tried to be different so I opened the company's first Italian, the company's first Chinese the company's first Indian, we did fine dining. And then on the bar side, we really tried to copy what was on the high street again, as opposed to being a bit of an old-fashioned holiday camp. And that was a tremendous success. And I had 18 bars, 23 restaurants, about 27 shops on the site in a site and10,000 people a week would stay on their sites in those days, I mean, the same site now, capacity is about six and a half things and because the accommodation wasn't brilliant, I have to say so we squashed them in. But from there I went to to hotels for Butlin's, went to Blackpool. And, again, when I went there, the hotel was very successful and so much as it was running over 80 or 90% occupancy, I think was 92% occupancy. So you've got very little space to grow the business. We were on the the only Hotel in the seafront, I couldn't build anything, it was a grade two listed building. So how do you get more money from the same number of customers? And the obvious thing is you make it better. So we created a whole new brand of accommodation, they had a standard, old hat now, this was quite revolutionary, their their initial kitchen area, we bought we imported lovely Italian furniture. So they had a living area, a sleeping area and a kitchen area. But then, because we wanted those people to feel special, we gave them their own car parking space, we gave them their own space in the in the restaurant, we gave them their own seat to watch the shows. So they thought they were coming in, they be treated like a king. So whilst they couldn't get any more bedrooms, what we did is we moved the tariff up. I mean, those days forget, we were charging. Now, probably, you could stay for 50 pounds a night, you know, we were charged 120 pounds, and 130 pounds a night. So getting much more revenue. So once you've got the initial investment in, it's about delivering exceptional service to those people. Once they come out with their room, everything's the same. But it just made a difference. It lifted those people, someone met them. As they arrived, they carried their suitcases in for them. They checked them in, we said they had their own Butler, well, it was the same girl that was the maid. But for those rooms, we gave her a different uniform. And she just made a bit of a first set of customers as they came in. But people loved it. So it transformed the whole hotel. And in the end, I couldn't build the new premier accommodation fast enough to create to satisfy the demand. So that's two examples there, which actually say the same thing is about being innovative. It's about being different. It's about raising the standards, you have to invest to get better. And when I talk to people, in the moment, you know, we've just gone through a horrendous 12 months, I've worked through many recessions in the past. And there are those companies that when things get tough, they save money, they cut back, they cut back, they cut back, where you end up saving so much money, you have no business. Or you can invest in your business, and you can grow your way out of it. So that's a couple of examples early on how I changed things. From there, I went to Brighton Pier. And at the time, we used to get about 3 million visitors a year to Brighton Pier. Probably the most successful undoubtedly the most successful pier in the country. So again, how do I grow that business? But we did. We pushed it to almost 4 million people a year, which means on a busy day, 75,000 people on a structure that's just over 300 yards long, and that is at it's widest point about 80 yards wide. You could lift your feet off as you came on. And you could get to the other end without touching the ground because the force of the people would carry you through it. But again, what we did there is again, this seems old hat now because you have to remember this is still back in the late 80s late 90s now, so we started putting on High Street brand, High Street Style coffee shops. Now every street corner now has a Starbucks or Nero's or cafe or whatever. But it wasn't then and what we had was greasy spoons. So again, looking at secondary spend, how do you change it? How do you make it relevant for those people that are coming on? We wanted to increase the dwell time How long people will stay with us? So the nighttime we put on firework shows. So instead of everyone disappearing at nine o'clock to hit the town, they'd have to stay on to 10:00, 10:30 because everyone wanted to see the fireworks. Well, in that time they're spending on our bar, they're spending at our restaurants, they're spending on the rides, they're spending in the arcades. So again, you know, I was there for just shy of six years. And over that period of time, we put a million visitors on the numbers. And I think it was a 6 million increase in gross sales. After six years of being on the pier, I decided that I wanted to run a zoo,

Nick Purslow: 10:47

As you do.

Bob O'Connor: 10:48

As you do. My son was was talking about having grandchildren. And I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I guess did something to give something back to be a bit worthy, rather than just making lots of money for big corporate companies? Wouldn't it be nice if I could do something different? So my first application was to Marwell Zoo, who said they were looking for an entrepreneurial chief executive. Well, they were until they met one. And they that rather scared them. And so I didn't get that one. Then I seen another advert for Bristol Zoo, which was my hometown, albeit I left quite a while ago. They said they wanted entrepreneurial chief executive. They didn't. The things I was suggesting was just too radical. And then I was contacted by a recruitment company and said, Would I be interested in running Howletts and Port Lympne? And I thought, well, how strange it is, I decided that I wanted to run a zoo, and now I've got the opportunity of running two zoos, and they're approaching me. So I met a gentleman and prior to going, I'd visited both sidtes. I wrote business plans for both sides. And he said that's exactly what I want. Now at the time, they were losing nearly 4 million pounds a year with 8 million pounds in the bank. So I had two years before we ran out of money. So that that focuses the mind, you know, I had a child at home you know, have a mortgage to pay and everything else I was moving yet again. So Minehead, Blackpool, Brighton. And now we're saying to my wife, How do you fancy Kent? We haven't done that part of the country yet. That only leaves the Northeast to do and we've covered the entire country. But, really enjoyed it. I mean, it was a charity that had been created, run by its founder,cJohn Aspinall, he died four years previously, his view was, if it cost 4 million pounds a year to run, it costs 4 million. He died, his son said, Well, we can't continue like this. So we need to do things differently. And I guess that's really, through Howletts and Port Lympne, how I became better known throughout the industry, because of the innovative things that we've done. Now, I've just spent an awful lot of time there cramming a lot of stuff in. Should I stop there before I go on to the next bit, or?

Nick Purslow: 13:36

Let's just talk, let's just talk about Port Lympne and what you what you did there because that, as you said, that's what attracted a lot of people towards you. And then some of the stuff you did there was, you know, was really innovative and it turned the business around. So let's talk about that. What sort of things did you introduce there?

Bob O'Connor: 13:52

Okay, so Port Lymne was the site of the two that I thought had the most potential. It was bigger, it was some 600 acres. It had been under-invested in compared to Howletts, all the money previously going to Howetts. So I felt there was a much bigger opportunity at Port Lypmne. So I started in January, and the first thing I created was what I call the African experience. Now what we were trying to do was to give people a safari experience without calling it a safari, because lots of, you know, Longleat were doing the Safari and Woburn did a safari and West Midlands did a safari. So we chose to call it an experience. I didn't want people to drive their own vehicles around for this reason. I've just said there were four or five people already doing that. So I thought how can we move people around a site that 600 acres, but the African experience was 100 acres. So I elected eventually to buy old army trucks. And this was actually brilliant because, A, they were very cheap. B, they were all well, they had great ability. So in those days, I was paying about 5000 pounds for them. I was spending about 3000 pounds to convert them, put seats in the back put new tarpaulins over it and put the speaker system so the driver could speak to the people in the back. And I started that in the June of that year. So started in January, we started that in June. In that one year, that put 100,000 additional people on the gate. So an extra 100,000 people came in that year, which was great. But what that did was reduce, you know, the 4 million bank loss to 3 million. So we still had some way to go. So we needed something really quite different. And I had asked some people when I was creating the African experience, I asked a number of companies to come in to do the branding. And one of them came in and produced, it was very Jurassic Park, I hated what he did. But he did a little, two-man tent with a man outside with a pith helmet on with a hurricane lamp. And I said, well I didn't say this to him, but what a wally. As though anyone's going to stay in a zoo. That was in about May, and then suddenly by the September, I had this brainwave overnight, why don't we let people stay in the zoo. So I always claim it was my idea, but actually, it was a marketing company, who planted the seed, it just took me a few months for that seed to germinate. So during the course of that winter, I created a accomodation on the African experience, because that was the logical thing to do. Because it became a real Safari, so you could not only drive around, but you could stay overnight. So I imported the tents from Africa, I imported the Rangers from Africa. So again, we're trying to give this really unique experience. So I was aware that if we did it, people could very easily just put tents on their sites. But would they think of doing what we did, to take it, even the food. The food was what the South Africans call a braii. So we will call it a barbecue. But it's a, you just all sit down with big open fire. And we used to have big slabs of fillet steak and they'd slice off the fillet steak for you. But the interesting thing was that we opened it for Easter the following year. I spent 165,000 building it. And I repaid that money before the end of the first season. We ran at, I think it was 94% occupancy that first year. We were charging people over 500 pounds a night. This is back in 2004. Well, if you think of accommodation that was around me and Kent at that time, you could have a six month luxury caravan down Romney Marshes for 600 pounds. I was telling you, it was 600 pound a night for two of you, 550-600, we kept putting the price up as we sold out and sold out sold out. So we realised that we actually stumbled onto certain things. So the first thing we did was to put more on the same site and then the site became full. To give it that real great experience. I didn't want to have too many more. But behind the tents was a staff cottage, which is a beautiful 200 year old cottage. So I converted that and we called it Livingston Cottage, very imaginatively, because we called the first one Livingston Lodge. So again, how do you do things differently? I could have just opened a cottage like everybody has a cottage, you go there you book three nights, four nights, you book seven nights, but I wanted it to be a one night experience. The difference was you had your own Ranger and your own chef. So you'll see that food will plays a big part of anything I do. So people will come in, and prior to arriving, they'd be asked the style of food they want whether it could be Italian, it could be Asian, it could be traditional steaks, could be a barbecue. And then in what I think people should do, everyone would come in, they'd sit around the dining table, and the chef would talk them through what he cooked. So it became an event the food became an event on its own. You had your own Ranger who would take your Safari at the time you wanted to go. And I had, I employed one South African who was brilliant. His name was Warren. And he would pick people up, have them drop their cars, take them off on safari. And he's giving them, here's the elephants, these are the rhinos, these are the giraffes. He's giving everybody the full story, and when he gets back in the evening, so he's having dinner with them, because again, if you do these safaris, the rangers have dinner with you, so they finished eating, and then he's continues talking. And he would start telling a story of things that happened when he was working in the big parks in South Africa. And you could hear a pin drop because as he spoke, he just kept dropping his voice and dropping his voice and people are gradually leaning in and leaning in. And in the end, I'm sure they went away believing that what he taught him he seen in Africa, they done because they used to write in it's always amazing these things when we were walking with the rhinos. We never let people, but he would tell them how he would walk with rhinos. So again, that worked really well. The Livingston lodge was an adult-only experience, and I'd discourage any child under about 14 going, but we are now getting demand. So from there, I thought, well, what could we do to create for the families so we created imaginatively Elephant Lodge, which was what we would now call glamping, eight birth tents, two bedrooms, living area outdoor deck, overlooking the elephants again, because I thought food's very important. So I have somewhere that's doing a braii, I have someone that's doing a private chef. So what can I do that will engage people? And I chose to do a Mongolian barbecue. Now, for those of you that don't know a Mongolian barbecue, it's a big, round hot plate that is about six feet in diameter. And you move the food around the plate at the top of the heated area, and the customer brings across the ingredients that they want to cook, they bring across their own vegetables, their own meat, and their sauces. And you cook it, you cook whatever they want. So again, it's it's theatre. So it's entertainment, and we used to let children come to stand next to the chef and they would trust their own meat and vegetables. So you have theatre. And that's how you take being, you know, a food that you might have got 10 pounds a head for this, suddenly, you could get 18 pounds a head, because you're adding theatre into the mix. So now we're on a bit of a roll that you can stay with us apart from the cottage in different types of tent. Now the next thing I was gonna do, I'm gonna have to spend a lot of money, I've spent relatively little money at this point, probably six or 700,000 pounds, so relatively little. I had then seen a place in Sweden, called the tree hotel. And now they had this right up in the Arctic Circle. They had five units all themed differently. So one was a flying saucer. One was called the mirror cube. So it was just a box that the outside was completely covered in mirror so it blended into the forest. Another one was a container. Another one was the same shape as the mirror cube but covered in twigs and they called it the nest. The other one was, they called it the Red Room, which was named after a room that's in the Swedish pizza parlour, but painted blue, which I thought was strange. But anyway, that really inspired me to do something really different. I wanted to do tree houses, but I didn't want to put a log cabin up a tree because people were doing that. So what can we do that was different? So we had several visitations of parts of the park we began to do it in and initially we were going to put something really high and have rope bridges in between it, and then that became maybe quite difficult to manage after people had had a drink or two. We eventually ended up with very contemporary units built on an escarpment. So they were basically cantilevered out over this edge of the cliff. So when you look down, you've got a 30 foot drop. But actually the back is level one. So it made real good sense to service it for emergency exits. But we planted up behind this, so when you looked at your back windows, all you saw was a tree, you didn't realise actually, that the back was level you just saw, you've got these amazing views. And because of where we were situated, you could actually see France from from that view, sort of the views were absolutely stunning. Now, this was going to be a self catering option, because we hadn't done that before. So we put really good contemporary kitchens in. But because I wanted to create something that could bring people together, we built a clubhouse. So really nice. So first, a great big roaring fire in the middle. And fire is something that continually goes through the things I do and what I can talk to people now, people have sort of lost the arts when I was a child, we'd go up to the fields, and we'd let a bonfire and we'd have big bonfire on Bonfire night when no one seemed to really do that anymore. But just for children to sit and toast a marshmallow over open fire, they get really excited. So we put it up, I believe it's beautifully sculptured piece of kit cost a fortune. But it gave people a central point to come out of their accommodation meet before they go on safari, or they go for a walk around the park, whatever it may be. Now, that was that was over 2 million pounds. So you know, we, we've more than doubled on one development on what I spent on everything up to that point. But we opened it. And I started with an opening price of 600 pounds a night. But that was just just a combination, no, no food involved. And that first year, we ran at over 88% occupancy, that first year, 10 units. And we kept it between 88 and 91% occupancy, or we just kept putting the price up. Because if you fill everything every night, you don't have time to put things right that go wrong. You don't have time to touch up the paperwork, you don't have time to clean the furniture. So it's really important, I believe that you give yourself a little bit of space. So if you're filling 100% it, you're doing it wrong, I'd say you're too cheap, you should keep pushing the price, pushing the price pushing the price. And I think if you can get somewhere between 88 and 94% occupancy, you're bang on the money. So that was scary, because suddenly I'm saying to the trustees that this is great, what we're gonna do next, but luckily, by now they bought into it because we this we've now done four things. And we were then ploughing through so we just became more ambitious on on things we could do. Like we did the hotel. Next we had a beautiful building in the centre of the park, which was our offices, I kicked everybody out, put them into what I called the executive offices, they call it the shed, I couldn't quite understand that. And we turned the hotel into eight bedrooms or five bedrooms and three suites. We did them really well. Really contemporary. Again, because the hotel was built as a private residence originally, so it had amazing views from every single room. We then created another restaurant downstairs because now we were getting, you know, we could have several 100 people staying overnight. So we needed to grow along with the combination we needed to grow the food offering. So we opened a restaurant in the hotel, but again, I just didn't want to do the traditional country house. Everyone's doing that. So again, we give a different twist. And that worked exceptionally well and we do barbecues out on the patio. So if the food again played a very important part. The next big expenditure was Tiger Lodge. So we built a house inside of a tiger enclosure. We built one one year, one the second year, and the only thing that separated you from the Tigers were 14 mill of glass. So nobody else in the world was doing anything like this. And cat are particularly inquisitive, they're always wandering over to the glass to see what's happening. So you're literally 40 mill away from a 30-stone tiger. And that was amazing. So again, we were running. I started off selling that. So at the time, the most expensive accommodation I had was the tree houses, which are 650 a night. So I said, well, we'll go 750 a night. And I sold out the first two months straight away. So I went to 850. Next week, I went 950. The following week, I went 1000. The following week, I went 1100. And literally I was raising it by 100 pounds a week. So by the time we had it on sale for about six weeks, we were up to 1100 pounds a night, and then we'd sold out for the whole year then so I couldn't, I couldn't change the price anymore. But the nice thing was we were getting amazing reviews, and everybody loved what we were doing. And then it's how do you do the next one. Now these people in Tiger Lodge, they were a long way from any accommodation. So we had to think, well, how are we going to get them to be able to get to a restaurant. So I looked at building a road down and that was six or 700,000 pounds. So we bought some golf buggies, necessity being the mother of invention. In those days, a golf buggy was about 6,000 quid. So 600,000 pound a bit of road, 6,000 pounds to buy a buggy. I bought a buggy. And then people loved the buggy, so I had to buy a buggy for everybody, because everybody wanted a buggy. So everything we did after that had a had a golf buggy, sat four people. And of course, to drive around, well, 400 acres, you couldn't drive around the African experience because you've got no sides on it, the rest of the park, you could drive around. And yeah, so that was absolutely amazing. And we went on after that, we did the bubble, which was a literally a clear bubble. We did the shepherd huts, wee did some little eco pods. So that was our cheapest accommodation. So it's like a wooden tent. A lot of people call them eco pods. They're not really Eco, but they're made of wood, and they're low impact on the ground. So we started off selling those at about 130 pounds a night. And again, that went up to I think about 180, 190 and there was no toilets. In those there was no nothing. But it was the experience, people were getting, a unique experience. And then we made some little mini tree houses. So they were different, you sort of climbed up steps into sort of like a turret of a castle. And I the last before I left, because I left there, maybe two years ago now, I had just bought another mansion on the edge of the ground, which I would think this year will open as giraffe lodge, giraffe manor. So you've seen the one in Africa, so the giraffe will come along stick their head through the windows you're eating, so that should open this year. And the other one was Cheetah Lodge. And these were wigwams. So these were seven metre wide by seven metre high. Glass fronted wigwams, again, taking advantage of that amazing view we had right across the channel towards France, always with fire, always with great food, always with a great view. By this time, we were really struggling for restaurants again, everywhere was filling up very quickly. So we created an Italian again, we went to the high street for innovation. And we really quite closely copied Franco Manca, which I thought were the best pizzas on the high street. But we had the theatre where the chefs would throw the the bases, they'd be cooked in a clay oven. So again, we kept with the theatre of of the of the food, which is the entertainment. It could be, it's quite a long evening, so we wanted the food to be part of the entertainment for the night. And I wanted people to sit with their children. The children not want to pick up their iPhones not want to play on their iPads that they'd be engaged with what was going on. That's a potted history there to the point of Port Lypmne.

Nick Purslow: 34:48

Brilliant. So I mean, you tunred Port Lympne around. Would you say if you had to pick one thing that did turn it around, would it be being able to just justify a higher price or something that brought more guests in, or encouraging people to spend more.

Bob O'Connor: 35:05

What stopped it going bust was doing the African experience, because that gave us the revenue. For very little expense, to create the African experience was something under 100,000 pounds. So we had a field which had some a few animals in it, we had to make it rhino proof. So we had to put, and we had to put this sort of air lock system in to get trucks in and out. But it was relatively cheap to do. But that got our name out there. So that's the that was the catalyst really, for everything that came afterwards. The secret after that is just being different. Everybody, no one was doing glamping in the early days, but then everybody started doing glamping anyone, who had a field would do glamping. And I would argue that's the problem today, anyone who's got a field thinks they can do itm when they can, but they're not really going to make any proper money, unless they're different, because otherwise it becomes a race to the bottom. If you've got pods here or or shepherd huts in your neighbourhood and raise them to fill it, you're going to keep reducing the price and reducing the price and reducing the price. It becomes a race to the bottom, you have to find why people come to you and not go to your competition down the road. So find what is your USP. And that should be different every time you do a new investment.

Nick Purslow: 36:29

And so, I mean, to a lot of businesses, marketing is really important. But if your offering is as unique as yours, did you find that your experiences did your marketing for you? Or did you have any particular marketing strategies that brought people in as well?

Bob O'Connor: 36:50

Both. The thing that really got us well known is I did a campaign on London Underground. Okay. And if I'm honest, that was a real big turning point, we had a very successful business that was growing going great. But I did it at Kings Cross. And I forget the numbers, there was something like a million and a half people a day go through the system there. And we bought big boards, there's big boards you see on the platform. And then as you go down the escalators, there are electronic boards, we bought those, we bought them for two weeks. I mean, it wasn't a lot of money in my overall budget. But for someone starting out, so I think you know, campaign like that will probably cost me about 35 40,000 quid to do for three weeks. But in that three weeks, probably 10 million people saw us, and the phones just went off the hook, I had to double the size of the sales team. So the best advertising is, is free advertising and if someone recommends, but putting that stuff on London Underground, meant that we were then getting calls from the Sunday papers who wanted to travel articles on us. We were winning awards. We won Best leisure business from England award, we won every award locally for innovation for for growth, for customer service, we were winning the five stars on TripAdvisor. Because no people can compare us they couldn't say what it's like that place down the road, but a bit better. Or it's like that place down the road but not as good. They can only compare it with us. And as long as we know, we knew we were giving a good service. And nobody was doing anything like it. So, and I would argue that even today, there are most zoos now have some sort of accommodation. I will say most of them have not been bold enough. In some of the things they've done. They've taken the easy option. And they've taken the, they haven't been bold. They've tried some of the things that I tried 20 years ago, and or 18 years ago, and they haven't continued that innovation, whereas Port Lympne have continued that innovation even during almost two years after I've gone.

Nick Purslow: 39:20

Right and this this is clearly a career with an incredible amount of success. And I'm aware that this question might, you know, I might fall flat on my face with this question because it might have been 100% perfect, but you must have had something that failed at some point or something that didn't go quite as planned. And if you did, did you learn any lessons from that?

Bob O'Connor: 39:42

I did loads of things went wrong. I just told you all the good things. Yeah. So I don't know where to start now. People have known me for a long time and one of my best friends currently is the managing director of West Midlands Safari Park and he used to work for me 30 years ago, running shops for me, and most recently was my director of accommodation at Port Lympne. But when we were in Minehead together, he was running shops. And we were trying to be innovative and all the different things we completed. I said, you know what we're going to do, we're going to do curtains. He said, What? I said, we're gonna do curtains. He said, you want to sell curtains on a holiday? Yeah, it's brilliant. And there was a company on the high street at a time called Rosebery's. And I used to see them and I thought, this is really innovative, what they're doing. Do you know what, people don't come away on holiday with the measurements for their windows. So I went, Oh, boy, that didn't work. That was yeah, but however, I don't regret doing it. Okay, we lost some money. That was tough. I guess the thing I lost the most money on will music festivals. Second year, I was at Port Lypmne, we decided to do a music festival. And we booked some of the biggest acts in the country and I 10,000 people down, I had employed groups of people. That was a disaster, cost me an absolute fortune. I then found out that every music festival loses money, the first year, breaks, even the second year, makes money the third. I didn't know that. So I lost several 100,000 pounds on my first music festival. I made it all back, because I did most of them, 15 or 16 of them in the end. But there was a very steep learning curve. The problem with music festivals is your all your money, you pay upfront, and you make your money on the last 10% of your tickets if you don't get that last. So if you book, you hope for 10,000 people planned, and you get 9000, you will lose money. And you will lose a lot of money. So yeah, certainly, that was the biggest. I worked continually for 42 hours on that one without sleeping, I was so stressed. But the next year we got better. And the next year, like made all that money back within two years. And then everyone after that we made money, not always a fortune, but we always make money. I then decided after we'd done about six or seven that I would rent the land to people and take the risk, I would just get the rent for it. But very, very interesting times and it took me back to my days on Butlin's, you know, we used to book all the acts that would come in the hotel, and that was how we would fill hotel rooms by booking the acts that were over on the way up or you know, in the distant past, bands from the 60s or whatever. And I thought I could replicate that. So that was a that was a sharp lesson that was.

Nick Purslow: 43:04

And so, I mean, your strategy is a unique one, you know, it's creating something completely different. It's being bold, it's, you know, striving for the highest quality of experience for your guests. Is that something that you came up with yourself that strategy? Or is there anyone in particular that you've met who influenced you, or a book you read or anything like that, that sort of influenced your strategy over the last few decades?

Bob O'Connor: 43:27

I don't think there's any, any one person. When I was with, I didn't tell you, when I was in retail, I worked for a company called Focus Home centres, which probably disappeared before you were born. They became Wickes. And they were they were quite big for a while, they had about 150 stores in the end. I joined them when they had two. They were owned by British Fuels, which was a coal mining company. But the chap who was, he was he was effectively the managing director, although he was just called the director. We didn't have a managing director, chap called Derek price. He allowed me to think differently and was always very supportive. You know, when things went wrong, most things went right and when things went wrong, he was supportive. So I would definitely hold him up there. And when I went to Butlin's we had a managing director called Jim Mattel, who I used to clash with quite a lot, but he just knew how to get the best out of me even when I thought I'd buttoned down every single thing, he comes along and says, Bob, this is great, but... An example is, I opened the company's first Tex Mex restaurant. And one of the things we did were buffalo wings. And I done this amazing deal to buy very cheap wings. We had a great recipe for the sauce to go on it He came in, he said, these are brilliant Bob. I said, Yeah. And I think you won't believe how much I paid for chicken wings, a really good deal. And he said, Oh, well, he said, our main catering, so bear in mind 10,000 people would stay on this site. And every week, the people who paid for half board would have two or three chicken meals. And he said, Don't they throw the chicken wings away up there? He always seemed to pick up the one thing, why didn't I think, I could have had my chicken wings for nothing. So he was a way of inspiring me. He wasn't difficult, well he was difficult, but he can always find the one thing that I forgotten. And that's always made me subsequently tried to think of, I don't want to be caught out again. Yeah, I'm talking now. That's 25 years ago, I worked for him now probably 27 years ago, I worked for him. But yeah, that's something inside me that like people to pick up on something I've missed, always makes me drive for the next thing. So certainly, that's two people who I would put up there and as people, one as a leader of men who would, and women who would allow you to make mistakes, and therefore allow you to grow, the other guy who would just say to me, You've forgotten that, but you didn't think of that.

Nick Purslow: 46:24

And so now you you do your own mentoring service, I believe, for people in the industry.

Bob O'Connor: 46:30

Yes. So I work across attractions, and also caravan sites and holiday sites and holiday centres. Yeah, just passing on really, the knowledge very often, particularly with small attractions and small businesses, they've grown through the business, and they're often very successful businesses, but they only know what they've learned in their business. So I often go to businesses and see the same things that are missing in each group. It's just things that I know in my DNA, because I've been doing it for forty years. And it's just little tweaks to things. And sometimes, you know, it's young managers that are coming up. I was a manager at 20. And I, I'm sure I made loads of mistakes. I didn't know I was making mistakes at the time, but I'm sure I did. At 20, you think you know everything. But the truth is you don't. And I'm 65 now, and you learn how to deal with people differently. Sometimes the exuberance of youth can stop people seeing what they do wrong. So yeah, I work with a lot of companies. Recently, lots of contracts, but I can't even see anybody, so yeah, just help them grow, either grow in their business, or to and maybe as well as grow their business.

Nick Purslow: 48:03

And you mentioned there's a few common themes among the tweaks that you have to make what sort of common themes are there?

Bob O'Connor: 48:11

Sorry, could you say that again?

Nick Purslow: 48:12

Okay, so are there any common themes that, when you're making tweaks to these businesses, are there any, is there anything that a lot of businesses do need to tweak that they're not aware of?

Bob O'Connor: 48:23

Yeah. So how can you grow your business? You can get more people to come in. Or you can get people coming in to spend more, or you can cut your waste. Really, that's the three ways to get more profit. So I always look at how much people charge to come in Very often, so one site I went to, it was aimed at younger children, I would say aimed at children aged between nought and five, and they let under threes come in free. If you're building an attraction that's aimed at, that's the people you should be charging. But it can be different with different businesses. Some people think they say, Oh, this area, they they won't pay more than that. But they will if you're different. They will. If you're innovative, they will. If you give them a reason to come back to you. If you're the same as down the road, then they won't change. Very often, staff costs can be very high. People equate giving great service with having lots and lots of staff. You don't necessarily need to have lots, you need to have good staff, well trained staff, not lots of staff. So I went to have my jab last two weeks ago and it was a really super smooth experience. There was somebody stood on the road directing into the car park. When I got to the car park, there were four people at a little kiosk, checking my number. Then someone directed me further into the car park when I got parked my car, someone came across to me and checked that I was okay. They said do I know where to go, they pointed me in the direction of where I needed to go next. The point I got to this alleyway, someone pointed me along further. I got to that, someone stopped and they said, Oh, just hang on there a second, go across to a receptionist. The receptionist pointed me to another girl who was still there. I went to there. She said, Hang on a moment. They then said go to that point there just wait a moment, then good. Then there were two nurses, gave me my injection. I came out, there was two people showing me the way out. When I got back to the car, there were three people show me how to get in the car park, which for me was fantastic. But Jesus Christ, you could you could have, you could have done that with a third of the staff. And it would have been equally you know, the government aren't looking for this to be run cost effectively. They don't want to be criticised. Because they got everything wrong in the first part of this pandemic, they you have to say they've got the injections and the vaccinations really bang on. You know, we're world leaders in that. But I and that's not uncommon to see far too many staff. And then not to be afraid to go out and negotiate with your suppliers to get your prices to the right point. So that your margin improves on there. And check the wastage. So let's say there are only four ways you can improve your bottom line. So I started each of those. And I would go through and give them advice on how to improve on each of those areas.

Nick Purslow: 51:44

Excellent. And then before we wrap up, and I I can guess what the general gist of this answer is going to be. If I could ask you, if you could give one tip to prospective glamping site owners or anyone thinking of entering the hospitality or leisure industry, what would that be?

Bob O'Connor: 52:04

Be different.

Nick Purslow: 52:05

Thought so. I think that's all we need to say. Okay, and if anyone if anyone wants to get in touch with you, how can they do that?

Bob O'Connor: 52:18

Yeah, so it's boboconnor.co.uk. Very easy. Or look at my website, which is www.boboconnor.co.uk.

Nick Purslow: 52:29

And we'll put the links into the description. Yeah, thank you very much for coming on. Really appreciate it.

Bob O'Connor: 52:38

You're most welcome.

Nick Purslow: 52:40

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Glampitect podcast. I hope you enjoyed and that you found value in today's episode. If you did, feel free to leave a rating or review on Apple podcasts because it really helps us move up the podcast rankings. Thank you.