Take it to the top

You may recognise Terry Welsh. In his last job, he had the dubious privilege of taking part in a fly-on-the-wall documentary about life at a health farm. Anyone who followed the goings-on at Forest Mear, where he was general manager, will recall that on the last day of filming Terry came into contact with a psychic. She told him that he would be leaving soon, would change his career and probably end up in London. As someone who had immersed himself in, and adored the world of, country house hotels and property – and claimed that the fattest pay packet in the world would never see him based in the capital – this news was greeted with something of a dismissive smirk.

‘The day I stepped out of Bank tube station and stared up at the tower, I thought to myself, “Terry, what have you done”,’ recalls Welsh of his first day as general manager at Tower 42 – the former NatWest Tower in the City of London – just four months after filming finished. It was during his short-lived TV fame that he caught the eye of the tower’s new owner, Greycoat. The tower was half-empty and the company needed someone with the vision and ability to introduce the service standards it believed would lead to full occupancy. Welsh, it decided, with his lengthy career in hotel management, was the man. Greycoat was right – the building is now full and achieving the highest rents in the City.

‘In the hotel world if you don’t consistently keep service levels high and exceed your customers’ expectations then you are out of business,’ says Welsh bluntly. As far as he is concerned the same is true in the facilities management world. The skills that he acquired and honed on his way up through the hospitality industry, from trainee chef to general manager, are easily translated to the new world he now inhabits. And it seems that the hospitality trade is likely to lose increasing numbers of its professionals to the world of facilities management in the future, as firms latch on to the skills they have to offer.

‘I deal in moments of truth,’ says Welsh. ‘In a hotel one of those moments is your first encounter with the reception desk. If you are not greeted properly, a negative thought process sets in.’

In the hotel world if you don’t consistently keep service levels high and exceed your customers’ expectations then you are out of business

Terry Welsh, General Manager

Every member of the Tower 42 reception workforce has a hospitality industry background and all are multi-lingual. And just like in the best hotels, there is also a concierge – a person who can organise all those little things that make life so much more pleasant. Theatre tickets? No problem. Restaurant booking, laundry service, taxi? Ditto.

Believing that the ground floor needed some life injected into it, Welsh set up Café Zero, providing all the typical casual eating requirements as well as room service that allows Tower 42 tenants to phone or fax down an order and have it delivered direct to their office. The old-fashioned brasserie on the 24th floor has been replaced by Restaurant 42, a full-blown restaurant open into the evening. Coming in June will be the Sky Bar, a 55-seat table-service champagne bar on the 42nd floor. And for visitors to Tower 42 there is the luxury of the 1960s-style first-class lounge above the reception area, where they can have coffee, watch Sky Sports and Bloomberg TV, or plug in and download their e-mail while waiting for their appointment.

‘Once you raise expectations you are on a treadmill that you can never get off. The more you do the more that is expected of you,’ admits Welsh, who incidentally is the only Greycoat employee in the building. Everyone else is employed by one of the contractors. Not that any of Tower 42’s paying customers would know, however, as Welsh insists that they all wear the same badges. For example, even the building engineer from an external contractor wears a ‘Tower 42 engineering team’ badge.

Welsh is confident that his team is getting it right. He knows because every six months he asks by way of a satisfaction survey. And then he feeds the results back to each contractor.