FEATURE
Disrupting Tourism Technology The Highland Perthshire business owners planning to shake up booking and ticketing in Scotland. Richard Drummond: Hotelier and Founding Partner of Hop Property Management Software
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ichard Drummond has worked in the hospitality business for over 40 years. Trained as a chef, he spent time at the world-famous Gleneagles in the ‘80s before going on to launch one of the UK’s fastest-growing catering companies, Out of Town Restaurants, in the ‘90s. In 2007 he joined forces with Jon Erasmus, creating a small chain of Highland hotels and restaurants. Their combined assets of The Strathgarry Hotel (Drummond) and McKays Hotel (Erasmus) launched the enterprise that grew to include The Boat Hotel in Boat of Garten, The Seaforth in Ullapool, and MacDonalds in Pitlochry, which was integrated into McKays. Since then, they have ridden out two recessions, covid, and Brexit, and most recently pooled their extensive industry experience to create Hop, a Property Management software system. Drummond commented, “Eight years ago, we bought the guesthouse and takeaway next door to McKays and redeveloped the site into what it is today. We have 40 bedrooms, the live music venue, restaurant, bar, and award-winning fish & chip shop. “It’s a great business, but alongside our other two hotels, we were spending a lot of money on our property management system. This always irritated my business partner; these products are expensive, but they rarely do what is required. Jon 22
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had been threatening to create our own system for years and driven by mounting frustration and cost, we contacted Ronald Tweedie, a friend of Jon’s from his IT days, and we put our heads together.
We’re currently in over 200 hotels across five continents, from the Caribbean to Florida and Africa. “It took two years to develop, and initially I knew nothing about tech! But I did know first-hand the pain caused by ineffective systems; I’ve been in the heat of a kitchen; I’ve serviced long queues at check in. I understood what needed to be fixed and why – and Ronald, with our assistance, knew how to make that happen.
“We ran beta testing in McKays before rolling it into our other hotels. A year later, in November 2018, we launched Hop into the market.” Today, Hop Property Management System promises to streamline multiple day-today processes by integrating a booking engine with a channel manager, event management, customer relationship management, and revenue and reporting. The software can be used for multiproperty companies and, importantly, comes in at a competitive price point. Drummond continued, “The beauty of a cloud-based product is that it can be accessed from anywhere. While 34% of our business comes from Scotland, our customer base is worldwide. We’re currently in over 200 hotels across five continents, from the Caribbean to Florida and Africa. “It is a crowded marketplace but if you have a good idea, that benefits everyone, then it will travel internationally with ease. Add to this a willingness to listen to feedback, to evolve and grow, and it’s easy to see why we’ve made such a strong start. We came to disrupt the market, while offering real value for money to the industry, and I’m proud to say that we’ve done exactly that.” hopsoftware.com
