The unveiling of The Bristol Hotel on 9 February 2009 marked the beginning of a new chapter for The Doyle Collection. The opening coincided with the first of its London properties, The Marylebone Hotel, and was soon followed by The Kensington Hotel and The Bloomsbury Hotel. These four are the UK component of an 11-strong portfolio that has recently undergone a complete transformation.

The Doyle Collection has come full circle since its launch by Pascal Vincent (PV) Doyle in 1964. Then a family business, the hotelier enlisted the help of his children to build an empire to rival Jurys Hotel Group. But, following PV Doyle’s death and an internal power struggle, Doyle Hotels was acquired by Jurys in 1999 to become the Jurys Doyle Hotel Group, the largest in Ireland. The group was taken private in 2005 and The Jurys Inn division subsequently sold to Quinlan Private. This left a select number of handpicked properties in the UK, Ireland, and the USA, back in control of the Doyle family, in particular PV’s youngest daughter, Bernie Gallagher.

Gallagher immediately realised that investment was required to get the portfolio where they wanted it and so deliberately shrunk the portfolio, keeping the eleven hotels that best fit moving forward.
Enter Bill Walshe. The former Marketing Director of Jumeirah was brought in to oversee a €200 million renovation for the launch of The Doyle Collection’s properties. “I joined with the brief to lead the reinvention of the company which would involve the renovation of the portfolio, the rebranding of the organisation, and setting up new service standards... really a comprehensive relaunch,” explains Walshe. “Prior to that, I spent seven years with Jumeirah through a period of explosive growth which saw the opening, takeover and renovation of a number of properties.

“I’m hotels person through and through,” he says.
So how did Walshe go about relaunching an entire brand? “From an operations point of view, the first step was to create a vision of success and work backwards from there, defining what the component parts were.”

Working with experts in various fields Walshe was able to build the brand taking into account everything from design, to services, working with the likes of John Wood (former Executive Chef at the Burj Al Arab, and later The Dorchester) who helped to “reinvent all the restaurant experiences from the style of food that we cook, to the way we display our menus.”

The resulting essence of the new Doyle Collection is what Walshe describes as ‘memorable luxury’. “What that means is that we try to capitalise on the individuality of our designs, the uniqueness of our service, the reinvention of our food and beverage experiences in restaurants and bars, and to interpret luxury in a modern, understated, but very relevant manner.”

This luxury, according to Walshe is achieved through each hotel being “utterly faithful to its location and to the building in which it operates.”
All eleven hotels have contrasting character and personality but share a common spirit of providing guests with a memorable experience based on a design ethos of simple understated luxury.

The brief to the design team, led by Bernie Gallagher, was “for each hotel to be individually treated and individually considered in terms of the design approach. Not to simply take a design philosophy and replicate it across the company.”

Dublin-based Sheehan & Barry Architects was responsible for the interiors of all four of the recently launched hotels. Partner and Designer Denis Looby worked alongside Gallagher, who was very much involved in every stage of the design, from early layouts, to the selection of fabrics and furniture.

“Each of the hotels is different in terms of design as we set out to respond to individual building types and locations,” explains Looby. “At The Bristol our aim was to challenge the hard urban feeling of the architecture and to use materials and furniture which would create warm and welcoming spaces.”

The style of the hotel is described by Looby as “classic contemporary, using a combination of strong and subtle colours to create very comfortable and casual living spaces.” The public areas are a series of linked spaces of differing heights and scales for which “a carefully selected palette of colour varies from soft pale tones at the entrance, which is relatively low and lacking in light, to bolder more earthy tones in the double-height light-filled restaurant.”

The furniture comprises sofas and chairs from George Smith and Kravet, upholstered in soft fabrics with strong accent colours. Flooring ranges from pale limestone, to dark distressed boards and custom-made carpet by Brintons. Tables, lighting and accessories are a combination of metal, wood and glass with an Art Deco feel.

Wanting to create a complete look with seamless transition from public spaces to guestrooms, Looby opted for dark wood joinery with mirrored detailing, pale leather headboards, and soft fabrics such as chenille and velvets in the guestrooms. The colour palette varies from teal and eau de nil, to raspberry and brown both with soft creams and taupes. Brightly coloured prints are used for detailing and cushions.

The design team worked with a number of suppliers, with specifications differing for each property in the collection. For example, “George Smith has provided a lot of the furniture for our Irish and UK hotels,” says Walshe, adding: “In the Kensington hotel we’ve got bespoke Julian Chichester four-poster beds, our lighting comes from Porta Romana, and the carpets that we’ve put in were not existing off the shelf designs, we’ve spec’d everything ourselves.”

Further FF&E suppliers include the likes of B&B Italia, Zoffany, Fox Linton,  GP & J Baker, and Ulster Carpets, to Villeroy & Boch, Dornbracht, Kaldewei and C.P. Hart in the bathroms.

In a two year period, Gallagher and Walshe have reinvented The Doyle Collection in keeping with PV Doyle’s original vision. With no plans to add to the portfolio, the plan now is to concentrate on the current collection, “making the changes work for our customer and generate the return that we’re looking for,” says Walshe.

He concludes: “Having now renovated the whole portfolio we are competing in a very difficult market but we are competing with the best possible product and while others are losing market share, we are gaining it.”

www.doylecollection.com