Discover the art of running a good hotel business

While past owners of the Karoo Art Hotel failed to find and keep their market, the current proprietors have survival lessons to share with everyone in the hospitality industry

- Brian Berkman.

A regular programme of specialinterest group events and a hearty helping of Karoo hospitality may make this iteration of a Barrydale country hotel the one that finally succeeds.

The adage that to make a small fortune in the wine industry you have to start with a big one applies equally to running a hospitality offering.

Heavy competition from providers of Airbnb-type accommodation scratches away at room-rate earnings, while the growth in self-catering options and the increase in available convenience foods erodes restaurant income.

NOT YOUR TYPICAL B&B

The solution may be what the Karoo Art Hotel in Barrydale is doing. Here, they offer competitive room rates yet deliver more than a typical B&B in terms of style and comfort. Here, too, the food offering is sufficiently affordable, tasty, and hearty in portion size to tip the balance in favour of dining out rather than in.

And they welcome the whole family including one’s pets. Olden-time spoils include the option of a morning coffee tray brought to the room as a wake-up call if you’d rather not make it yourself.

Karoo Art Hotel chef Derek Louw knows his market well and delivers handsomely. Added to which, the relatively new owners, Sue and Rick Melvill, the founders and partners behind Melvill & Moon’s high-end safari accessories, have the business and social networks, as well as the marketing skills, needed to succeed.

FROM A BYGONE ERA

A mini showroom of Melvill & Moon items available for purchase sits in the hotel’s breakfast room and coffee shop, and a number of their furniture items, such as chairs in the dining room and the Roorkhee Campaign chairs, modelled on the original used by the British army and made from timber and canvas, are on the black-and-white ceramic tiled front stoep. Look out for their safari washbasin/ice buckets and luggage racks, too.