For Paul Bream, the hotel he runs with his brother Gareth isn’t just a building or a business. It’s at the very heart of his family. So when they were forced to lock the doors of the 64-bedroom Merrion hotel on Llandudno seafront for the first time in 70 years – right before the busy season – it wasn’t just financially worrying, but personally heartbreaking.
“The business has been in my family since 1949 – for four generations,” says Bream. “This is more than bricks and mortar to us, this is who we are. It’s part of our family and our identity; to say that it’s important to us wouldn’t get close. We have heritage here, long-standing relationships with guests. We’re part of their lives, they’re part of ours.”
June would usually be one of the busiest months of the year for the Merrion, says Bream, with guests returning to the hotel year after year. Not this year. The hotel closed its doors on 21 March, and he and Gareth still don’t know when they will be able to welcome people back. “Normally we would only close for January, because there is a post-Christmas and new year hiatus when people just don’t go away. But from the beginning of February we’re open; February and March is a kind of shoulder season for us, then we get to the end of March when really our summer season begins and runs all the way through to October, when we have another shoulder season before Christmas.
“At the moment we would be in the heart of our season. This is the first time this kind of thing has ever happened, and to be closed through the season is bizarre.”
With 47 staff on the books and bills to pay on the 120-year-old building, having no guests is a huge problem. But a package of support from the UK government has proved invaluable in helping the business weather such a difficult time.
After a “deeply unsettling” period from mid-February to when they closed on 21 March, announcements of a raft of measures to support businesses allowed the family to “breathe a sigh of relief”, says Bream. “We kept our commitment to staff in the hope that something would come along, but we just didn’t know what was going to happen. And then the [UK] government announced the furlough scheme and we just breathed a sigh of relief. We could hunker down for a bit.”
Alongside the furlough scheme, which has allowed the hotel to furlough all 47 staff without making any redundant, it has also benefited from the Welsh government’s decision to halt business rates for the 2020 financial year. On top of that, the UK government’s Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), which provides businesses with loans of up to £5m, with no interest due for 12 months, has allowed Bream and his brother to continue paying their bills to ensure they are ready to start trading again as soon as they’re allowed to.
“Obviously with a building this size, the standing costs don’t stop simply because we lock the front door. We have ongoing costs, which we can’t get away from. For example, our broadband alone costs about £500 a month. We wanted to make sure that we had enough liquidity in the business for however long this lasts, and not have any issues with our suppliers and be ready to hit the ground running when lockdown is lifted.”
As well as keeping the bills paid, the CBILS has played a part in ensuring Bream can maintain confidence when it comes to his suppliers. “Business for me is all about relationships, both from the customer side and the supplier side. It’s very important to us that our suppliers have confidence in us because it’s a two-way street
– we have to work with them and trust them and vice versa. For them to know that we are in a secure place going forward, hopefully allows them to run their businesses and be ready to supply us when we reopen.”
For Bream, the speed with which his bank ensured he could get the loan also helped alleviate some of the worry at an incredibly stressful time. “The CBILS was offered at the beginning of this, but we weren’t sure whether the scheme would be withdrawn or reduced or changed, so we took the loan while it was on offer – whether we used it or not was another thing.
“Barclays have been superb with us, we are very fortunate to have a great relationship with our manager. They understand our business and have gone to great lengths to help us. They are another supplier so it’s important for us. We have been with them for probably about 50 years. It’s important for us that they understand us and we can confidently do business with them. They were as quick as they could be with the difficulties that they faced – obviously they had a tsunami of applications.”
With a package of support keeping the business afloat, Bream is cautiously optimistic about the future, though he admits there are challenges ahead. “We have a wonderful client base, we have built up relationships with people over the years. I constantly get phone calls from guests asking when they can come back. That is really heartening because once we can get the message out that we’re back in business, I feel fairly confident that there will be a bounceback.
“Customer confidence is also an unknown factor because people have been locked down for so long – whether they have a fear of going out or mixing in pubs, or fear of contamination, I can’t quantify. I think it depends how far into the unlocking we are before hotels are allowed to open again,” says Bream.
“Maybe the staycation will be the thing for a couple of years, which would be great, but we have still to present a safe and reassuring image to customers who are coming away and we want to be in a position to do that.”
This advertiser content was paid for by the UK government. All together is a government-backed initiative tasked with informing the UK about the Covid-19 pandemic
