Ben Harper knows how to make a brand sing. With a background in extended stay hits SACO and Edyn he has lived in Cornwall for the last 10 years and is behind the Watergate Bay Hotel, Beach Retreats and Another Place brands across the wider UK. Felicity Cousins, editor Sustainable Hotel News talked to Harper about the launch of SeaSpace which opens this weekend.
SeaSpace is an experience-focussed aparthotel concept where guests stay on the coast and become part of the community during their visit, whether that is in the destination restaurant – run independently from SeaSpace, or at the new Padel Club, another partner of the new aparthotel.
Harper talks philosophically about the sector, about how to build community for a better purpose, what makes people tick, what they want from their time away from home, and how to breathe fresh energy into places which have not had the investment they well deserve.
Tell us about SeaSpace. There’s one property in Newquay, when does it open?
BH: It’s had a soft opening but the big hooray moment is on the 18th of October. So that’s our first SeaSpace. We bought the property two years ago and we operated it in its previous guise [Sands Hotel] for 12 months and then we closed it, and then the day after, we started what has been a nine month development project, which is a refurbishment of the existing hotel.
The Sands Hotel Resort was relatively traditional, but in its time quite innovative on the coast of Cornwall, and I think it found it had slightly lost its place in the market, and was perhaps under invested, and seeing the competition around it move progressively into a sort of lifestyle space. That’s the opportunity that I see in many, many different UK coastal markets.
Why couldn’t you do that when it was a hotel like Watergate Bay? Watergate Bay hotel is very much community and experience-led as well?
BH: It probably has something to do with my background. I was involved in SACO, which became Edyn and we created the Locke brand, which was the first aparthotel concept to really “get” the whole lifestyle brand positioning and I just saw the success of that and the cut through of that from a brand perspective.
I live in Cornwall, and have lived in Cornwall for 10 years now, so while I was doing that I always knew that there was a version of that which connected with a more coastal leisure market. So the reason for doing it in its aparthotel guise, was that was the strategy; to diversify the model, not to dilute from our existing hotel businesses, but to create something that targeted a different segment of the market. And I don’t think there is a brand in the UK that’s doing this with any real scale.
And do you think that the market for these experiences, is like the new luxury getaway? It seems that people want to have these well-meaning experiences when they go away?
BH: Yes I think that sense of place, that sense of authenticity, that sense of independence, and I suppose then pointing into the whole sort of purposeful, value-driven business, I think is right at the front of mind.
I wouldn’t use the word luxury. I think we are definitely targeting the mass market here, but a mass market who has the disposable income and has the desire to stay somewhere that perhaps has a little bit more meaning and authenticity, both in experience and in its positioning. We’re targeting the crowd of people who are familiar with a self catering experience, but with the bolt-on leisure and family experiences around the edges, but perhaps on a smaller scale, more intimate, more authentic,
So more independent and more sustainable?
BH: Absolutely, because I think as the world catches up to this issue, I don’t think there’s anybody who wouldn’t want to be part of something that has that more philosophical values, sustainability driven positioning. We’re not positioning ourselves as a new, innovative sustainability brand in the UK hospitality. The positioning of the brand narrative is the way that we connect with people, that the detail, if people want it, tells that story.
Tell us about the community aspect of SeaSpace.
BH: What we are shouting about is that this is community-first hospitality. It sounds a little trite, and it’s certainly not a new word within hospitality, given the fact that everybody you talk to says it’s all about the community. But if I was asked 18 months ago what made SeaSpace unique, beyond the number of brilliant, lifestyle-focused hospitality offerings there are in the UK that have just popped up out of nowhere post-pandemic, it’s the fact that we’re building it for the community first.
Can you explain this more? Are you serving the community first and the guests will come?
BH: What I mean by that is our investment in the communal spaces. SeaSpace has a brilliant cafe, which will be for the community, a brilliant craft beer led New York Italian style restaurant, which isn’t a hotel restaurant, it’s a community restaurant, and what makes that real is that it’s not us operating it. It’s a destination restaurant for the community of people who live within the radius of this site.
We’ve also got a sizable health club and we’re targeting 400 members from the community. We’re pricing that membership in an accessible way. We have also built within the grounds a Padel tennis club – I think it’s the biggest in Cornwall. So we have four double courts and two single courts, half of which we’ve got a roof covering so it’s weatherproof, which is helpful in Cornwall. But again, we’ve partnered with a specialist, to build it, to operate it, and they will be going into the community and building their own membership without us.
All of this means that it will become this really cool ecosystem of different places our guests will want to be a part of. You can play Padel and you can drink here, and you can go in the pool. It’s community, come here, create the vibrant, cool atmosphere, and actually, our guests just want to come and be part of it.
So this is like an open village kind of feeling, where you’re at the heart of it, and then there’s different things people plug into.
BH: Exactly right. Yes, exactly right.
I was looking at the accessible rooms on your website. Can I ask you if you’re going to put photos of your accessible rooms on the website?
BH: We absolutely are. The accessible rooms will be promoted and published as a key part of the offering.
I’ve been talking to a lot of people recently, in our piece on accessibility, and one of the massive bugbears is not being able to see a picture of the room. You can read about the room but often there’s no photo. How many accessible rooms do you have at SeaSpace?
BH: I believe it’s half a dozen and the nature of an accessible apartment is that it’s a great experience. It’s not half the experience. And I think the nature of apartments, because there is more space, because you can be a little bit more thoughtful means that the experience for those who need those accessible apartments, for whichever reason, is going to be a great one.
I read something about dementia training for your staff?
BH: Yes it’s a big part of the B Corp process around the kind of S and G, of ESG, as well as the E, and this inclusivity and education around the needs of the multitude of guests that we see is really important. So I think we’re right up there in the training and the support that we’re giving our team. We can help people in whichever way they need to be helped.
Are you attracting quite a young crowd? Do you think, or is it quite a mixed market?
BH: I think it’s going to be a mixed market. I believe commercially, and apologies for breaking it into crude commercial terms, is that we can’t be too selective in the targeting of our audience. When we created this brand, and we’ve done it very, very successfully with our Watergate Bay and Another Place brands, is that as the year progresses, we dip in and dip out of different demographics. So at the moment, we just came out of the school summer holidays and now it’s very much a slightly older market where their kids have flown the nest and they’re coming to really enjoy the fact that they don’t have to come in the summer. And how wonderful those guys coexist really successfully with a group of younger parents who have preschool aged kids.
I spend a lot of time talking about not being too cool for school and not being too clever in our design and our positioning, and we’re certainly not going after the hipster and post hipster crowd, but I know that if we create these very cool, very innovative spaces people will come and I’m pretty inspired by the fact that it doesn’t really matter who you are, what you wear, what you want to do, how old you are, whether you’re a family or not, or whether you’re coming with a bunch of mates. It doesn’t matter. You should be able to find something within our spaces that you connect with and that’s the goal.
That sounds really inclusive to everybody and welcoming, doesn’t it? I know it’s early days, what about expanding this brand eventually. Will it be across Cornwall, or are you thinking elsewhere in the UK?
BH: I’m pretty ambitious for the brand. I think we’ve built something, we’ve developed something, certainly in its name and visual identity with scale in mind. SeaSpace can be on any coast, in any country. I think it will be UK first but I’m not sure there’s room for another one in Cornwall. SeaSpace is built for markets that are probably up and coming, a little more edgy, probably more accessible in price, probably have quite a big pool of older seaside hotels that present opportunities, but that it sits within a vibrant community and where we can really bring this concept of community-first hospitality to life in a really authentic way.
Somewhere like Margate, for example?
BH: I’m really excited by the south coast, the Kent coast, so I know that market really well and as you come west Hove, Eastbourne some of the Devon coastal towns, Torquay, for example, where you’d think instinctively there’s not a market for this but if you know those markets and we’ve got quite a good track record of building destinations and pulling people into these interesting, diverse markets that they might not otherwise be going to. I’m pretty inspired by that.
That’s really inspiring it’s like the rebirth of the old seaside town.
BH: That sort of goes nicely into the whole sustainability piece of what our beliefs are. If we can inject these old, under invested, inefficient buildings with a new sense of life through construction, insulation, windows and solar power, energy efficiency, all of that, that’s actually philosophically is quite a quite good purpose.
With the building being retrofitted do you have BREEAM or any green building certifications?
BH: We’re aspiring to the BREEAM regulations. But I think the key sustainability piece on the Cornwall site is we didn’t knock it down and start again.
When we’re talking about carbon efficiency and carbon capture, I think that was the biggest play that we could make. But it’s interesting, isn’t it? I speak quite openly about this. I’ve been in a couple of sustainability conversations recently, and I find, it depends who you talk to on which day of the week to what the advice is. I think that that’s our biggest challenge from a sustainability-driven and purposeful business – actually making sure that we’ve got the right advice.
Because actually, I’ve spoken to somebody else in the industry who believes that these things should be not done and you should start again and build really, really efficient buildings, because it’s easier to get to net zero.
And balancing these decisions with the financial side?
BH: Yes making sure that everything we do is economically sustainable as well as environmentally sustainable. So it’s a big moving feast. We’re hotel people, we’re not environmental scientists and it’s difficult to cut through all of this stuff, to really land on what the best solution is. I think it’s easier on the social and governance side because actually, that’s within your control.
I feel really comfortable that the whole brand is built on that purpose. We can really deliver on that side. I do believe that the market, the construction market, the hospitality industry, could all do with more guidance when it comes to really sustainable development.
Felicity Cousins spoke to Ben Harper on October 8th. SeaSpace opens on October 18th.