We’re often asked why 80 DAYS chose to specialise in the travel industry and the answer takes us right back to the childhood of our Founder & Chairman, Mark Forrester. Mark’s family own Rufflets, a luxury country house hotel just outside St Andrews in Scotland, and so the hotel industry has always been a huge part of his life.
We sat down with Mark to talk about his relationship with hotels (Rufflets in particular) past, present and future, and how this has influenced 80 DAYS.
So, Mark, what was it like spending a lot of your youth in a hotel – did you treat it like a playground, or were you put to work?
The first job I can remember doing was helping the gardener. I think I was about 8 or 9 years old. When I asked my mother for some money she gave me a pay packet with 50 pence in it. A packet of Polo Mints cost 2.5p at the time so not too bad! I worked at the hotel during the summer holidays and when I was home from university for at least 15 years.
Was it always a given that you would become involved in running the hotel?
I was never pressured into going into the hotel business. Anybody that works in a family business will realise it is a hard thing to do as the older generation inevitably feel things should be done a different way. I was more interested in general business, sales and marketing and worked for some quite large organisations here in the UK and the United States. It was when I came back from the USA in 2002 that I got involved in the family business with one of my two brothers. My involvement isn’t operational, we have a good team running the hotel.
But Rufflets did play a role in you founding Occupancy Marketing, which would eventually become 80 DAYS?
Rufflets was one of the first hotels to be online; The Open Championship was in St Andrews in 2000 and the hotel launched a website in 1999 for the occasion. I became interested in the Internet and how some websites ranked and others didn’t. I asked pretty much everyone I knew in marketing some questions and no one could give me the answer so I researched the answers using forums and optimised the website. It became a hobby and at one point Rufflets ranked number 1 in the world for “country house hotel” and in the top 3 for “5 star hotel”.
Search Engine Optimisation became a fascination and two years later in 2002, I set up on my own and started trying to find customers. I slowly built up a customer base in Scotland and then in 2005 I hired my first employee.
What role do you play in the running of Rufflets today?
I provide some support, direction and guidance to our management team which is lead by Stephen Owen. I also provide input on technology, sales and marketing. We are fortunate Stephen has a solid management team that has worked at the hotel for many years.
What do you see in the future for Rufflets? Do you think you’ll play a larger or smaller role?
I would like to see Rufflets pass onto the 4th generation (I have 2 grown up children). If we achieve that we would become one of the few; less than 5% of businesses evolve to the 4th generation. My time involvement in the hotel isn’t that high, a few hours a week. I suspect I will become more involved as the management team increasingly take over at 80 DAYS. We still have a lot of ambitions for the hotel. In 2018 we are undertaking a major refurbishment and re-brand of the restaurant. In the near future, we will look into expanding our services with beauty treatments being one obvious area.
Does this help 80 DAYS better support our other hotel clients?
Absolutely – being actively involved in running the hotel means that I can see things from our clients’ perspective, and help ensure that our service is supporting them in the right way. I’m also privileged to get an insight into the different areas of running a hotel which can often indirectly impact what needs to happening in marketing. I’ve strived to share this knowledge with the team at 80 DAYS as well, so that while we’re concentrating on delivering marketing campaigns, we’re also conscious of what’s happening in revenue management, hotel operations, etc. – having sight of the bigger picture.
All of this makes 80 DAYS so much more than a run-of-the-mill marketing agency. With our origins in hospitality we are specially designed to work as partners with hotel & travel businesses.
To discover how we could help you, please get in touch.