QHotels are in partnership with The PGA as a PGA National Tournament Partner. Part of the long-term strategy is to continue playing a key role in grassroots golf, employing and supporting numerous PGA Members, while providing opportunities to grow the game through coaching, club management and event activation
Similarly, PGA Members can benefit from exclusive access to facilities at The QHotels Collection venues, which will also serve as locations for PGA-endorsed events, further cementing the group’s reputation as a leading golf destination.
The QHotels Collection is one of the country’s leading hotel and golf resort operators, with 19 four-star hotels and resorts across the UK. Included within that are seven golf resorts – Slaley Hall, Forest Pines, Oulton Hall, Belton Woods, Telford Hotel, Dunston Hall and Glasgow Westerwood, offering 11 championship courses.
Keith Pickard, QHotels’ Golf, Health Club & Spa Director, and himself a PGA Member, explains how pivotal PGA Members are to the group’s overall strategy.
Pictured: Keith Pickard
How many PGA Professionals do you employ?
We have around 20, and they cover a multitude of different roles. Many are within the golf operations side of the business, and they also deliver tuition, or we have someone dedicated to running the academy and providing tuition services or custom fitting.
It’s very diverse, and that’s one of the wonderful things about The PGA and the training and skill sets that young pros develop. You gain a multitude of transferable skills that, depending on where you start your career, allow you to specialise in different areas.
When recruiting, what are you looking for in a possible new employee?
We’ve got three main recruitment areas. The principal one would be within our golf operations team assisting with the day-to-day running of the golf retail area, tee sheet management and guest services. That’s a very diverse role.
Then we have our dedicated freelance PGA tuition instructors, who might combine coaching with operational duties or focus on full-time tuition.
We also have two sales functions. One is based at hotel level, focusing on golf membership sales, where our preferred candidate would be a PGA Pro. The other sits within our central golf sales function, selling what we call group golf – party sizes of 12 or more – including larger residential breaks, corporate, or society events. Our preference is always to recruit someone from The PGA who has been through the Excel process.
What is your policy on getting trainees or assistant Pros into your resorts?
Our policy is very open, and we will support anybody, including our current operations team members, if they want to go down the PGA route. It is funded by the individual, but we’ll support where we can. The PGA also provides some levies and grants to help those who want to go down that paid-for pathway.
Pictured: Dunston Hall Golf Club
What have you seen change in your five years with The QHotels Collection?
Covid was clearly a horrible thing for a lot of businesses and people, but golf has benefited from it for sure. It was one of the first sports that could return after lockdown and, when you work in a commercial environment, there wasn’t a lot of good news when you looked at the monthly P&L for resorts or hotels during that period. But golf was the one area that performed strongly. That encouraged us to invest further. I’ve been very fortunate with our investors and CEOs, who understood the value of golf – not just what it brings to the golf P&L, but also the impact on other areas of the business such as rooms, food, and beverage. We’ve been fortunate to receive significant investment, and we’ve delivered that back many times over.
What projects do you have coming up in the near future?
We currently have TrackMan driving ranges at three of our venues: Oulton Hall, Belton Woods and Dunston Hall. The intention is to roll that out and develop full TrackMan and driving range facilities at the other four resorts.
We’ve invested over £5 million across our venues during the past four and a half years. That’s not just in new machinery but also within the infrastructure of our courses, bunkers, pathways, and drainage networks, all of which help us to extend the playing season. We’re proud that, even in inclement winter weather, our courses remain open and playable at full capacity.
I look after the people, product, process and profit strategy, but I surround myself with people who can do their jobs better than I can. We take a very collaborative approach when it comes to developing initiatives and strategy.
“PGA Members can benefit from exclusive access to facilities at The QHotels Collection venues, which will also serve as locations for PGA-endorsed events, further cementing the group’s reputation as a leading golf destination” - Keith Pickard
How successful are The QHotels Collection in sharing knowledge across the resorts?
We always start the year with a two-day meeting to discuss key topics and plan what we want to achieve in the coming 12 months. That session sets out our year-long strategy and involves not just our Heads of Golf but also our Head Greenkeepers and resort General Managers. We take a collaborative approach, there’s a framework, but we recognise that each resort has different needs and we adapt accordingly.
We also have weekly and monthly calls with the Heads of Golf and our Course Managers, and we conduct quarterly audits with the Course Managers where our Heads of Golf and General Managers are actively involved. The Course Managers audit each other’s courses, which helps share best practice and has strengthened relationships between the venues. While each resort operates independently, our Heads of Golf and Course Managers regularly connect to exchange ideas and drive continuous improvement.
