INTERVIEW
THE SPIRITUAL GM MARC DENTON has been General Manager of the Fife Arms for the past six months and the Swiss-born hotelier is relishing his role. SUSAN YOUNG caught up with him at the hotel to find out why he swapped Koh Samui for Braemar.
16 • HOTELSCOTLAND
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he Fife Arms in Braemar has become one of Scotland’s most talked about hotels over the last few years housing. as it does, one of the country’s finest art collections, courtesy of owners Iwan and Manuela Wirth, of Hauser & Wirth. You can sit beneath a Picasso or pass by a piece of artwork by Martin Creed, and there are 1,000’s of objets d’art to enjoy throughout the hotel. Their refurbishment of the hotel was a labour of love, and during the lockdown, they continued to invest with the creation of a new whisky bar, called Bertie’s. They also appointed a new General Manager Marc Denton. Before I interviewed Marc, I spent an evening in the hotel and I got an opportunity to watch him in action with his guests. He was the consummate professional making sure they were comfortable and checking if they needed assistance. So it didn’t come as a surprise to find out that he had gone to the famous hotel school in Lausanne. What was surprising was the fact that his father had put his name down for the school when Marc was just 12. Marc’s father certainly had foresight, and Marc agrees. He told me that his father felt that his disposition and academic prowess would fit with a career in hospitality. Certainly, it has been a career that has seen Marc travel the globe although the majority of his time has been spent in the far east. The likes of Mauritius, Thailand,
Indonesia and India as a resort General Manager, and now he is living in Braemar. Marc smiles, “People are always asking me what do I prefer, but you can’t compare the countries. They are two different environments. It’s the people around you who matter. And to be honest a white sandy beach may be beautiful but you only have to walk half a mile down the road here in the Cairngorms and you can see the most spectacular scenery.” The beauty may help him destress from all the challenges the Fife Arms and the hospitality industry as a whole is facing. He tells me, “I don’t think the circumstances we are in are a reflection of the profession. No one could have imagined the impact the pandemic would have. I am not saying in the past that we didn’t discuss what would happen if there was a virus or something of the sort, but they were always movie-like scenarios. When it actually hit it was a fascinating evolution of events. Because it was something we were all living in real-time. In other circumstances, we would have turned to leaders and followed their guidance but there was no precedence and decisions were being made based on evidence on social media and the news. We were all going through the process together.” It’s not the first time that Marc has seen hospitality affected by an external seismic event, he was in Canada when 9/11 occurred. He says, “After the World Trade Centre events international travel stopped with immediate effect overnight. It was a difficult time. But luckily it rebounded relatively quickly.”
