He started his career pulling pints in the Bigg Market and is now home again in Newcastle trying to bring the public perception of hostels into the 21st Century. Karen Dent meets Euro Hostel managing director William McClelland.

RESEARCH – and doing the digging yourself – is a thread that runs through William McClelland’s conversation.

Taking the time to look a bit deeper helped him make the decision to bring the Euro Hostel concept to his home city and unearthed the name for its attached bar and restaurant, The Ware Rooms.

“We’re on part of the site where Newcastle Prison was,” says McClelland.

“I think it was 1928 that it was closed down. If you look out the back into the BT building, which is a secure communications hub, you can actually see the old execution chamber.

“Carliol Square is where the prison was and we wanted to acknowledge that fact so we did some research on it. One of the more famous prisoners incarcerated was a guy called Henry Cunningham – Newcastle’s equivalent of Fagin.

“He ran a gang of pickpockets and thieves. Eventually they caught up with him and got all of his stash, his ill-gotten gains, and where he’d had his stash was called The Ware Rooms.

“So that’s the logo – The Ware Rooms and Henry Cunningham – that’s what we guess he looked like.”

The Ware Rooms and the 250-bed hostel has been open for four months, but the Euro Hostel group, which McClelland joined in 2002, has owned the site since 2007.

The Scottish business, which was set up in 1999, opened its first hostel in Glasgow in 2000 and also runs a summer season hostel in Edinburgh. Newcastle is its first venture south of the border.

He said: “We did all the research why Glasgow was so successful and what the similarities were with Newcastle.

“It’s a slightly smaller population, but the demographics are very similar – the budget airline routes not being one-way routes, internationally-known sports teams, student populations, etc.

“We knew Newcastle should work for us and it was about finding a property of the right size in the right location that we could make the numbers work on.

“We actually bought the building in 2007 and we have 150-year lease from Newcastle City Council.

“The East Pilgrim Street area is a hotspot for redevelopment. It took some time for the council to come up with their preferred scheme which they now have.

“But unfortunately, a lot of the development funding isn’t happening around the area.

“So we pushed on with our development, thinking we could spark development in the rest of the area because this is really the last pocket of Newcastle city centre to be developed.”

Euro Hostel differs from many people’s perceptions of a hostel. McClelland’s background is hotels – most recently with Premier Inn – and he is bringing the budget hotel concept to the hostel market.

He says: “I can put up four people in a room for the same price they would be paying in a budget hotel for two people in a room.

“I’ve thought long and hard over the years about changing the name – would it be better for people to understand?

“What people are expecting now from a hostel is very different from what they were expecting 20 years ago from a YHA, which was much more of a community experience – doing your own dishes and making your own bed.

“The future of hostels as I see it is more the budget hotel model. If I wasn’t in this industry and pushing the understanding out there, I would probably have a similar misconception about who we are and what we do, so it’s about education.

“It’s rate per person that we look at and making the stay as affordable as possible. We pretty much manage it in the same way as a budget hotel or a budget airline – the earlier the reservation is made, then the cheaper the accommodation. The difference we have is that we can accommodate people in rooms from one to 10 people, all en suite, whereas your traditional budget hotels have a maximum of two adults and two children.

“The more people in your group, the less you pay.

“We get a lot of contractors and the great thing about that is it tends to be quite lengthy work so we get to know the residents a lot better.”

There are also families, students, backpackers and ‘flashpackers’ (generally older, more affluent travellers), youth groups and couples staying.

But one market McClelland doesn’t want is stag and hen party groups.

“Like it or not, Newcastle is a stag and hen capital. It’s shedding its image a bit as a party capital and is becoming more cultural, and that is working without a doubt, but there is still the traditional stag and hen market.

“I’ve been as vocal as I can be to say that we really don’t care for stag and hen groups. If they slip through and they behave well that’s no problem – and they will slip through the net.

“It’s a minority that make trouble, and it is a minority, but you very quickly get a reputation for stag and hens that I don’t want.

“And indeed, we’ve got what I consider a handsome high street bar operation here and during the week it’s filled with suits and a good mix of people.”

Fenham-born and-bred, 41-year-old McClelland now lives in Forest Hall with his wife Paula, and daughters Isabel, five, and Imogen, three.

A big Newcastle Falcons and Newcastle United fan, he claims he banned Paula – “a Mackem” – from having a Sunderland season ticket when they met.

He says: “There was no specific time frame, but I always knew that when I started a family I wanted to do it in Newcastle because of the standard of education, the people, family and friends. The city is so compact and easy to get around.

“From my house I’m into town in 15 minutes, the coast in 15 minutes, the airport, the station – everything’s just really manageable.

“I think it has to be a sentimental thing. I’ve got a couple of friends whose expression is that ‘Newcastle should always be kept in the rear view mirror’ but they are very much a minority.

“Most people who are born in Newcastle, they want to travel and they want to work elsewhere, but they will always be true to their roots.”

McClelland left the North East in 1989 to take up a management trainee role with Intercontinental Hotels.

“I did fall into it, but I knew it was the career for me,” he says. “I started working in bars in the Bigg Market and bars all over the place prior to moving down South and starting my career with a trainee management position with Holiday Inn.

“That was in Gatwick, which was good exposure – very busy hotels, high volume with all the facilities, so you got all the disciplines.

“Then I moved to south London and operating hotels there. I left Holiday Inn and moved to a sister company at the time, Bass Taverns, and ran bars for them.

“After that I joined Premier Inn where I got loads more rooms experience. They are masters of their sector.

“I spent about 10 years down in the South East, came back here, opened a hotel in Glasgow and then I took a year out and did a fast-track MBA at Northumbria. That brought me back here.

“I just wanted to broaden my horizons and thinking really. I left school at 16, didn’t do A-levels, didn’t do a first degree, and just felt that my understanding of business needed some theory.

“I was doing well in my career with Premier Inn, but I felt that to take the next step I needed the theory and the background.

“I also was perfectly open to leaving the industry, but halfway through the course I knew that I wanted to get straight back in and the MBA from Newcastle Business School is superb.

“There’s a lot of international students so it’s a great mix of people and I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I couldn’t wait to get back into the industry that I know and love.”

He received the call from Euro Hostel to take a strategic view of how the business should develop.

“It’s all well and good taking a challenge on, but you’ve got to be convinced,” says McClelland.

“But very quickly I knew that there was huge potential to bridge a gap in the market, which was B&B, traditional hostel and budget hotel, and to position ourselves very neatly there.

“Before I enter any city, I test the water by hiring halls of residence. So in Newcastle I hired a halls of residence from Northumbria University, traded it for a couple of summers to see who we’d work with and who would want to pay at our price point.

“It was called Euro Hostel’s Newcastle Halls, so I did that for two years to prove there was a demand for our product.

“What it does is give us a flavour and rather than paying a marketing firm five-figure sums to do the market research you do it yourself.

“I’ve got about five feasibilities on the go – part of my role is to find the property and then do the development.

“There isn’t the fire sale of buildings in the UK that people think there is. Yes, property prices have gone down, but in an awful lot of the cases people have the finances to hold on to the buildings until there’s a recovery.

“In our locations, which have to be city centre, we are looking at properties that simply can have the numbers and see if they’re going to work for us. Quite simply, Euro Hostel is all about volume, maximising your revenues per square foot.”

York, Liverpool and Edinburgh are next on the agenda for opening. McClelland says that travelling is a passion and he always keeps an eye on new trends in the overseas markets.

“I’ve travelled extensively, but I’ve never done the backpacking thing. I’d love to,” he says. “I’d love to take a couple of years out and do some serious travelling.

“I haven’t worked abroad, but I’ve travelled extensively throughout South East Asia, Europe, South Africa and the States – and with a bit of professional interest to see what people are doing.

“There is no doubt that the traditional hostels in Australasia are leading the way – certain companies have their own roof-top spas – that you wouldn’t necessarily expect in hostels. Of course, some people I will never convert into staying in a hostel, which is an insane snobbery!”