Profile: Simon Mackaness

Following the launch of Rudding Park's £9.5m luxury spa, owner Simon Mackaness tells Lizzie Murphy why now was the right time to build it.
Simon Mackaness, owner of Rudding Park Hotel in Harrogate, following the opening of its new £9m spa. Picture Tony JohnsonSimon Mackaness, owner of Rudding Park Hotel in Harrogate, following the opening of its new £9m spa. Picture Tony Johnson
Simon Mackaness, owner of Rudding Park Hotel in Harrogate, following the opening of its new £9m spa. Picture Tony Johnson

As I recline on an air lounger in the infinity pool at Rudding Park’s new rooftop spa, it’s hard to imagine a more relaxing space.

There are a few other people around but it’s peaceful and all I can hear are birds and a slight breeze blowing through the trees.

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The half-inside-half-outside rooftop experience, which also features luxury and herbal bath steam rooms, foot spas, ‘experience’ showers, a panoramic sauna and a rooftop garden, is the crowning glory of the Harrogate hotel’s £9.5m investment.

Featuring three floors of treatment rooms, pools and relaxation areas, Rudding Park’s 45,000 sq ft spa is vast but its careful design means it sits very low and blends into the landscape. It doesn’t look like an add-on and knits together perfectly with the rest of the four-star hotel.

Rudding Park’s owner, Simon Mackaness, had hoped to build the spa in 2010 when the hotel added a new bedroom block, the Follifoot Wing. But when the financial crash happened in 2008, he decided to put the spa plans on hold. And he’s glad he did.

“We’d been putting it off until we felt we had something which was going to stand out from the crowd and this is what we’ve built,” he says as he leads me round the building, which opened five weeks ago. It’s been in our minds for a long time. It was a matter of money and a matter of timing.”

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He adds: “Thank goodness we did (wait) because our ideas changed as we built the Follifoot Wing. We didn’t like what we were going to build beyond it so we redesigned it so it was more in keeping with the landscape.”

Space and natural light are key to the spa’s luxury feel, as is the flow of the building, which was designed by Enjoy Design in Leeds.

His wife, Judi, was an integral part of the style and decor. “We have interior designers and we have architects but you’d be surprised at how involved we get, making sure it’s what we want and not what they want because it’s ours not theirs,” he says.

The attention to detail is striking. Changing room doors open out into a private corridor rather than the main pool to ensure the privacy of guests; all the saunas have picture windows, and there are four relaxation rooms in the treatment area: a sleep zone, an audio room, a visual room with a large screen showing scenic pictures, and a mind zone with puzzles and colouring books.

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Rudding Park has been in the Mackaness family since 1972 when Simon’s father bought the house and its 2,000 acre estate as an agricultural investment.

The family, who lived and farmed in Northamptonshire for more than 600 years, have invested significantly in leisure developments since opening the Rudding Holiday Park in 1973. “We are hands-on entrepreneurs,” says Mackaness. “We wanted to develop the business in order to create a revenue stream.”

Mackaness trained as a chartered accountant at KPMG in London after leaving school. He later moved to Paris and was living in Harrogate at the time his father bought Rudding Park. He joined the family business in 1974.

The family went on to create a banqueting venue and golf course. The 50-bed hotel opened in 1997, followed by the Clocktower restaurant, its ‘Golf in One Hour’ concept and then the Follifoot Wing, which added another 40 rooms to the hotel plus a small spa, gym and private cinema.

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Over the years the hotel has attracted a number of high profile visitors, including Bill Clinton, Sir Roger Moore and Carrie Fisher plus pop groups and even royalty. “To me, it’s all in a day’s work,” says Mackaness matter-of-factly. “They all come with a lot of security and some want to go in the staff entrance, some want to go in the main entrance. Every day is different and that is the joy of working in a business like this.”

Hotel bookings are as strong as ever, he says, with an average occupancy rate of 85 per cent.

Rudding Park’s motto is ‘omnia nobis curae’, which means ‘we find interest in all things’. “We don’t specialise in one particular sector,” he says. “We have to use every opportunity we can to get the occupancy up.”

Rudding Park expects to achieve a turnover of £15m this year. The spa is expected to add 25 per cent to that figure by 2020.

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While some businesses lament the arrival of TripAdvisor, Mackaness believes it’s his ‘saviour’ as the hotel doesn’t have a marketing budget to advertise nationally.

Rudding Park is the only hotel in TripAdvisor’s Hall of Fame for winning a Travellers’ Choice for Hotels award 10 years running. “If TripAdvisor didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have the profile we have at the moment,” he says.

The main mistakes less successful hotels make online, he says, are ‘getting too excited and too personal’. If there’s a complaint, “it’s up to the hotel to change that guest’s expectations,” he adds.

Mackaness credits his managing director of 20 years, Peter Banks, for much of the hotel’s success. “He is one of the best hoteliers in the country.”

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Looking ahead, Rudding Park’s next project is to build a double decker driving range with self analysis bays for golf enthusiasts. “I get a buzz out of creating things,” Mackaness says.

Even so, following the completion of the spa project, Mackaness, 68, intends to take a step back from the business and let his sons, Matthew, the spa’s director, and Nicholas, also a director in the estate, take on more responsibility.

The move would give him more time to indulge his hobbies of horse riding, walking his two dogs, tennis and country sports. “Now I’ve finished this project I can take it a little bit easier,” he says.

Simon Mackaness Fact File

Title: Owner and chairman of Rudding Park

Date of birth: 1949

Education: Oundle School in Northamptonshire

First job: Plongeur/plagiste

Favourite holiday destination: South of France

Favourite film: The Sting

Favourite song: Hey Jude, by The Beatles

Last book read: Conclave, by Robert Harris

Car driven: Land Rover Freelander

Most proud of: My family

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