Tewkesbury Park


Tewkesbury Park is impressive from the outset

Along the way Tewkesbury Park became the UK’s number one venue for meetings and conferences, and there was even a prime-time reality TV show thrown into the mix.
    It all started with the McIntosh family’s passion for golf. In 2014 low-handicap player Chris McIntosh was looking for a commercial investment.
    He found Tewkesbury Park, located just five minutes from Junction 9 of the M5 motorway, and only an hour from Birmingham or Bristol. Its commanding hilltop position delivered breathtaking views of the Cotswolds and the nearby towns of Tewkesbury and Cheltenham, with the beautiful Malvern Hills also visible in the distance.
    But the resort was under par. Everybody could see Tewkesbury Park’s potential, but the challenge had proven difficult for successive management companies in the past.
    Commercial Director Claire White takes up the story. “My family has a farming background so when my brother Chris decided to take over Tewkesbury Park, we already had a strong feeling for land, and making the machinery investments which we knew we would need to bring the golf course up to standard. I had a Masters degree in Management with HR, and a career in hospitality and property management – so as a family we stepped up to the challenge.”
Undaunted by the enormity of rescuing this historic property, saving some 80 jobs along the way, the McIntosh family forged ahead with a comprehensive investment strategy to reposition Tewkesbury Park in the marketplace.

“When we took over Tewkesbury Park we decided to keep it open, so as not to disrupt the existing team, or the members of the health club and golf club. The health offering was a particularly poor standard so we started there first. But it wasn’t going to be easy. ‘How will we do this?’ we asked ourselves.
    “It was about doing the right thing, not the easy thing. It would have been easier to close, then refurbish, then reopen, but we felt that wasn’t the right thing to do.”
 


The family got to work, but after 18 months something was still missing. What they needed was a Patrick Jones.
“I’d heard that Tewkesbury Park had new owners, and that they were doing a thorough job” said Jones. “I drove over, had a look around, became inspired, and thought ‘this could be outstanding if done properly’. But it was looking very tired when I first saw it, and I knew that it would take significant investment and the application of a lot of TLC.”

With a Swiss heritage and a Hotel & Catering Management degree from University of Surrey, professional hotelier Patrick Jones had previously been with Swallow Hotels (now Marriott) and Virgin Hotels (now Handpicked Hotels) among others, and in 2015 he was General Manager at The Old Swan and Minster Mill in Oxfordshire, for the DaSavary family. The Old Swan was a “Hotel Of The Year” with its own individual style and an emphasis on lifestyle and ambiance – similar qualities to Tewkesbury Park.
    The meeting of minds went well.
“Patrick was a great personality match with us” said Claire White “We shared the same vision: if you want to stay independent, you cannot be in the mid-market where you’re squeezed from both sides. Patrick wrote a visionary business plan for us, based on building a high quality independent establishment.”

Jones said: “When we looked into the UK golf market we found that there were plenty of ‘good golf, average hotel’ and ‘average golf, good hotel’ experiences out there. Putting it simply, we decided to have a ‘good golf, good hotel’ strategy! Tewkesbury Park’s location gave it a big advantage, in that there is not a lot of competitive supply in its area, which is a rough triangle between Birmingham, Bristol and Oxford.

“As a hotelier I have seen plenty of companies which have the front-end gloss, but which haven’t got the back-of-house right. I thought, I can definitely help to change that, so in November 2015 I joined a business which was clearly still in an early evolutionary stage. I liked Claire and the family, and admired the integrity which they had shown in taking over and keeping it open, showing loyalty to the existing team rather than putting jobs at risk.”

Although the hotel offered clear potential for improvement, the golf course was the property’s largest asset. Tewkesbury Park began to invest heavily in upgrading the condition of its golf course, first by buying new machinery, then by appointing Paul Hathaway as Course Manager.

“Paul is an amazing individual, and he and his team have transformed the golf course here at Tewkesbury Park” said Jones. “To assist them in the early stages, we also brought two very good advisors on board – Peter McEvoy OBE, one of British golf’s key figures and a successful golf architect, and John Clarkin from Turfgrass, the golf course management and maintenance experts.
    “They brought along their experience of hundreds of golf course projects around the world, including preparing courses for the U.S. Open and Solheim Cup.
    “Our Par 72 18-hole golf course, which we call The Deerpark, was originally designed by highly-acclaimed golf architect Frank Pennink, whose Vilamoura Old Course in Portugal is among the most revered in the Algarve. We invested in a new range of Toro machinery, and Peter & John helped Paul Hathaway and his team, and Chris McIntosh our owner, to implement an extensive series of refurbishments.
    “The Deerpark is now acknowledged as being one of the best-conditioned golf courses in the West of England, especially during periods of bad weather. What Paul and the greens team have achieved in that regard is truly amazing – we tend to stay open much longer than other golf courses!”

But away from the greens, there was also a hotel business to transform.


Claire White: “From the start we decided to push the product well up-market, while staying true to certain key business segments. We identified these as Short Breaks, Golf, Weddings & Events, and the Conference market, and we decided to work hard to build a strong base of Golf and Health Memberships.
    “In all we invested over £13m in bringing Tewkesbury Park up to the right standard. Key milestones were the upgrades of our Opulence and Indulgence rooms in spring 2016 – this involved a £1m investment in just nine rooms, which we call our Historic Suites. These rooms helped to position our property and brought credibility in the marketplace.
    “We also undertook a six-year refurbishment programme for all of our hotel rooms, including most recently adding private patios to all of our ground floor hotel rooms, and creating six special dog-friendly rooms.
    “We are now proud of all of our guest bedrooms at Tewkesbury Park: every single one of our 93 rooms now has a stunning view, for example.

    “We also made major improvements to our Mint restaurant, and to our Health, Swim and Wellness facilities, but the opening of our Cotswold Suite meetings and conference centre in summer 2017 was probably our biggest game-changer.
    “Being named as the UK’s #1 Meetings & Conferences venue by Condé Nast Traveller in its 2023 Awards was a huge reward for all of the teamwork and effort which transformed TP into an amazing place to host product launches and business meetings.”

Other accolades came thick and fast.
“After much of our refurbishment work had been completed, we were overjoyed when The Sunday Times listed Tewkesbury Park among their 100 Great British Hotels in late 2019” said White. “Tewkesbury Park was one of only four golf hotels to be listed. The fact that the other three were Gleneagles, Roxburghe and Rockliffe Hall says volumes about the scale of our achievement I think – we were enormously proud.”

Along the way Claire White and her husband Dan, a barrister, even found the time to star in an ITV reality TV show. The Fortune Hotel aired in May 2024, offering a £250,000 price to a collection of couples who undertook challenges in a luxury Caribbean hotel.
    “It was unforgettable and a lot of fun” said White. “We met so many amazing people while filming The Fortune Hotel - many of whom have since come to stay at Tewkesbury Park.”

Back to golf though, for the final word with Patrick Jones: “We have also appeared deep inside some of the most prestigious lists of golf resorts in GB & Ireland, including appearing well inside several Top 100s. In fact we are currently ranked inside Golf World’s Top 50 Golf Resorts in the UK, which is a huge achievement considering where we were just ten years ago.”

Jones continued: “Golfers come to Tewkesbury Park to feel relaxed, at a home from home. This is where our independence works in our favour. It is hard to get that feeling in the larger corporate venues.
    “Tewkesbury Park now occupies a unique position in the British golf market, as the best small golf hotel in the nation, and we are hoping that many new friends will come to visit us for the first time in 2025!”