Behind The Scenery - Ian Taylor

Welcome back! In this edition of Behind The Scenery we have a fascinating interview with Ian Taylor, owner (alongside his wife, Christa) of the dazzling and delightful Kaleidoscope Hotels group.

Kaleidoscope currently comprises 4 luxury hotels in and around Bath: Homewood, Dukes Bath, The Bird and Bishopstrow. Each of these hotels are known and loved for their signature style; each with a beautiful, classic exterior and an ultra colourful, eclectic interior. 

In this interview Ian opens up about his journey from Northern Irish farm-boy to luxury hotelier, passing through Switzerland and London before finally landing in the Cotswolds to build his boutique hotel business with Christa. It is safe to say that Ian has followed his own path and dares to be different, meeting the challenges of the modern hospitality industry with his characteristic positivity and enthusiasm. 

In 2025 Kaleidoscope Hotels signed an amazing 3 year sponsorship deal with Theatre Royal Bath as the key corporate sponsor of our community engagement work. This work is now the major focus of the theatre as seen this week when our royal patron, Her Majesty The Queen, visited to officially reveal the name of our new dedicated community venue: The Billings. 

The biggest, boldest and most inclusive expression of that community work is David Copperfield: A Life, which is playing on our Main House stage this weekend with a cast of over 100 first-time and amateur actors!  

We want to publicly thank Ian, Christa and the whole Kaleidoscope family for making this work possible in 2026 and beyond. 

Please read on for our interview with the brilliant, Ian Taylor...

Nicholas: How did you get into hotels? What was your way in? 

Ian: I remember being at school and going through the career advice suggestions of what you should do, and I remember the appeal of going to Strath Clyde University to actually study hotel management. That was probably at the age of 12 or 13 and that stayed with me because my family background is very different to that: they're all farmers in Northern Ireland. So I was the oddball that didn't want to stay at home and farm. I wanted to do hospitality and they all thought I was totally mad.

So after my O levels I went to catering school, and then I had that opportunity to work in Switzerland and then Germany. The hospitality over there in Switzerland or mainland Europe is just taken a bit more seriously as a profession. I didn't even know a word of German and I was put in room service and in the restaurants. It was a beautiful five star hotel right on the lake of Plon. Just wow. That was back in 1979. 

Had you left Northern Ireland before?

No, that was my very first time and I do remember getting on the plane and there was a few tears and I wondered if I'd done the right thing. But I did it and that gave me a flavour of the hotel industry. When I came back I applied at Crest Hotels and I got taken on as a management trainee and I worked my way through, held different management positions up to the year 2000 and then Christa, my wife, and I thought we should be doing this for ourselves, so for the last 25 years, we've owned and operated our own hotels.

What was your first hotel?

The first one was in Chipping Campden at the top of the Cotswolds. Just before that I had been in the corporate world and I was running a 480 bedroom hotel next to Heathrow airport. So coming from that to a 15 bedroom hotel in the Cotswolds was a real shock. But we persevered and stuck at it. Then we added to it; we bought the house next door, we bought the property across the road and within seven years we had built something really lovely. We had originally bought the site for £1 million and it was a £12 million business when we sold it. In my wildest dreams, I had never anticipated anything like that, but, Christa and I both worked extremely hard and we loved it.

I think that success was because we were very much part of the community in Chipping Campden and we got to know the people and the people supported what we were doing. We were also one of the very first properties in the Cotswolds to give the place a much more contemporary age. It had that lovely cleaner feel to it and I think that is why it did exceptionally well. 

It sounds like you had a real journey with that first hotel. How has that informed what you do now?

Yes, certainly. The model since then has been to buy something that underperforms, give it a bit of love, invest in in it, employ the right people etc. But most importantly we always love working with the community and being part of the community, where it feels like a family. As opposed to a big 480 bedroom corporate hotel where everything is cooky-cutter.

What do you love most about owning and running hotels?

I think it's the people. I love bringing together the right teams of people. That interaction with the staff, and how the staff work together, is so important because as a guest you're making those judgements about whether you're going to go back based upon service, ultimately.

Out of all the hotels you've owned is there one that's your favourite?

I think they all have their own individual personalities. We've recently started working on Dukes on Great Pulteney Street. We've renovated four bedrooms so far, and we've still got the remaining14 yet to do, but I think it's beginning to get its own personality.

I guess in some ways the site dictates how it looks and how it feels. 

Yes of course, but, there's an aesthetic, right? There's a Kaleidoscope aesthetic within the hotels. We're bold. We like colour. And I think that is so welcome in Bath which leans so heavily on its heritage. We love the heritage but with a bit of the modernity as well.

I know everyone is asking the same question right now but, is AI going to change things in the hotel industry?

I think the great thing for a hospitality is that hospitality still needs people. It needs people to interact; that's what you're buying, especially at the luxury end of the market. AI can help to get rid of a lot of the boring jobs that you just don't need people to be able to do, but I think the industry is in a good position. But what is interesting is that people just are not spending the same money on booze, especially the younger generation. They're not drinking as much. It's a bit like, you know, 20 years ago, the telephone was a big source of income for hotels. The big corporate hotel in Heathrow I mentioned earlier used to take £1.5 million on people making phone phone calls from their hotel room. And when the mobile phone came along we had to adapt. So AI or a lower liquor spend is just another thing to adapt to.

Do you ever go to other hotels to research?

Oh, yeah, I love my research! I keep a very close eye on all the new properties that are opening in London and elsewhere. And I like to go very early because they tend not to be as busy and you get a pretty good insight into what they are trying to do. I think it's very important. This year we were at a hotel in France and they had a cold plunge and I just loved it, so we have plans to put that into one of our Bath hotels. We’ve made contact with another property that had beautiful gazebo structures in the garden and I thought, that's exactly what I'd like to have at Bishopstrow. So you do pick things up.  

Kaleidoscope has just committed to an amazing 3 years of funding  for our community engagement work, including the David Copperfield: A Life. Is this something you've always done?

We're delighted to be working with the theatre and  very excited about where that can go over the next three years. We have always been really passionate supporters of the arts here in Bath. We're involved with, If Opera, Mozart and the Bach festivals, Bath philharmonic. I think it's one of the things which makes us that little bit more unique and special is our love for the arts and wanting to support that very much here in the city of Bath.

Have you ever had any direct involvement with the art yourself? Or are your hotels the expression of your creativity?

I would say that hotels are the expression my creativity. I did art but I wasn't very good at it at school! What interested me is how you can create things and how things can be different, and I suppose as a child I was quite good at things like putting up the Christmas decorations. At home I would do things, as a child, that no one else would do. Like being able to go into a room and to see, ‘Well, that chair is not right, you need to change that, you need to move that over there’ etc.  

I could never understand like, when I was in corporate world, why you would buy 200 of the same piece of art and put one in each room. No! At Kaleidoscope, you may not love every piece but at least it makes people talk.

What is new on the horizon in 2026 for you?

We’re excited to properly re-launch Dukes with all new bedrooms in May or June this year. Each bedroom is a bit unique, they’re not all going to be the same. We've also just renovated six new bedrooms at Bishopstrow and the next thing is a new spa. At Homewood we are hoping to start developing six new bedrooms… I think that’s enough for one year?  

And finally, is there anything you've seen at theatre recently that you've particularly enjoyed anything you're particularly looking forward to?

Yes! We have tickets to Prima Facie. That's going to be exciting. Very much. And we loved Ralph Fiennes last summer. We love what you're doing and we’re very proud to be supporting you over the next few years.

Interview: Nicholas Fleming