Virgin Hotels Glasgow closes with immediate effect - four months after opening - as staff escorted from building
The decision for Virgin Hotels Glasgow comes just a week after The Scotsman reported the owners of the building had entered an administration process.
irgin’s premier hotel in Glasgow is set to shut with immediate effect – just four months after first opening.
Staff were told in a morning meeting on Tuesday before being escorted from the building.
The 242-bedroom hotel on the Broomielaw was due to close for trading on Tuesday. The move comes less than a week since The Scotsman first reported that Lloyds Development Limited – the company that owns the landmark building – has entered an administration process.
Staff told The Scotsman they were left surprised and shocked when the announcement was made.
On November 14, a Virgin Hotels spokesperson had told this newspaper: “We can confirm an administration process has started for Lloyds Development Limited, the current owner of Virgin Hotels Glasgow. Geoff Jacobs and Blair Nimmo of Interpath Advisory have been appointed as interim managers of Lloyds Development Limited. It is, however, very much business as usual for the hotel and our team, and we look forward to continuing to welcome guests and build on the hotel’s success.”
A statement released by union Unite Hospitality on X on Tuesday reads: "Our members at Virgin Hotels Glasgow have just been informed that the hotel is to close with immediate effect six days before Christmas.
"The CEO flew in from the US, but couldn’t even answer whether workers will get paid for hours worked."
Virgin Group had on Monday made an approach to buy Virgin Hotels Glasgow from the owner, Lloyds Development Limited, as part of the administration process.
It is understood the company was told the lender was choosing to pursue a sales process in the hope of getting a better offer and that will have an impact on employees, suppliers and guests. Each Virgin hotel is owned independently and operated under a hotel management agreement.
The company that owns the hotel building is part of a limited liability partnership of four designated members.
They are Richard Diamond and Rishipal Singh alongside Lloyds Development Ltd with a registered address in Guernsey and Moreply Ltd, registered in London. All four partners were appointed on 18 May 2017. The partnership was placed into administration on 30 November with interim managers appointed to the company that owns the Glasgow hotel building.
A spokesperson for the joint interim managers said: “Blair Nimmo and Geoff Jacobs of Interpath Advisory were appointed on December 1, 2023 as Insolvency Practitioners to Lloyds Developments Limited, which owns the property located at 246 Clyde Street in Glasgow. They have not been involved with the trading of the hotel at this address. The interim managers are disappointed for everyone involved with the insolvency.”
The decision for Virgin Hotels Glasgow comes just a week after The Scotsman reported the owners of the building had entered an administration process.
irgin’s premier hotel in Glasgow is set to shut with immediate effect – just four months after first opening.
Staff were told in a morning meeting on Tuesday before being escorted from the building.
The 242-bedroom hotel on the Broomielaw was due to close for trading on Tuesday. The move comes less than a week since The Scotsman first reported that Lloyds Development Limited – the company that owns the landmark building – has entered an administration process.
Staff told The Scotsman they were left surprised and shocked when the announcement was made.
On November 14, a Virgin Hotels spokesperson had told this newspaper: “We can confirm an administration process has started for Lloyds Development Limited, the current owner of Virgin Hotels Glasgow. Geoff Jacobs and Blair Nimmo of Interpath Advisory have been appointed as interim managers of Lloyds Development Limited. It is, however, very much business as usual for the hotel and our team, and we look forward to continuing to welcome guests and build on the hotel’s success.”
A statement released by union Unite Hospitality on X on Tuesday reads: "Our members at Virgin Hotels Glasgow have just been informed that the hotel is to close with immediate effect six days before Christmas.
"The CEO flew in from the US, but couldn’t even answer whether workers will get paid for hours worked."
Virgin Group had on Monday made an approach to buy Virgin Hotels Glasgow from the owner, Lloyds Development Limited, as part of the administration process.
It is understood the company was told the lender was choosing to pursue a sales process in the hope of getting a better offer and that will have an impact on employees, suppliers and guests. Each Virgin hotel is owned independently and operated under a hotel management agreement.
The company that owns the hotel building is part of a limited liability partnership of four designated members.
They are Richard Diamond and Rishipal Singh alongside Lloyds Development Ltd with a registered address in Guernsey and Moreply Ltd, registered in London. All four partners were appointed on 18 May 2017. The partnership was placed into administration on 30 November with interim managers appointed to the company that owns the Glasgow hotel building.
A spokesperson for the joint interim managers said: “Blair Nimmo and Geoff Jacobs of Interpath Advisory were appointed on December 1, 2023 as Insolvency Practitioners to Lloyds Developments Limited, which owns the property located at 246 Clyde Street in Glasgow. They have not been involved with the trading of the hotel at this address. The interim managers are disappointed for everyone involved with the insolvency.”
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:06 - No to Spain! - No!
00:07 - No to Spain! - No!
00:09 - When I say test...
00:10 - Jingle bells, virgin hotels, give us back our place!
00:15 [Cheering]
00:18 - My name's Brian Simpson, I'm the lead organiser for Unite Hospitality.
00:22 So yesterday our members, 134 workers, were taken into a meeting with the CEO of Virgin Hotel
00:28 who'd flown in from Miami to inform them that the hotel behind us was closing with immediate effect
00:34 and that they were effectively out of a job.
00:36 There was rumours but the company was never clear about what was actually happening.
00:40 So yesterday is the first time that our members verbally have been told that the hotel was closing
00:45 but the workers behind me haven't even been told 24 hours later what is actually happening.
00:50 They've not been told whether or not they're going to receive their wages.
00:53 They've not been told whether or not they have actually been terminated.
00:57 All they've been told is that the hotel is closing with immediate effect.
01:00 The workers behind me thought they were in a secure job.
01:03 The hotel's only been open for four months so they assumed that they were going to be
01:07 going through Christmas, working quite hard through Christmas, collecting a lot of tips and service charge
01:11 and here we are five days before Christmas and the workers don't know if they're even going to receive a wage.
01:16 There's a lot of anger as you can hear behind me.
01:19 They're confused about what's actually happening.
01:22 I've represented hotel workers for over ten years.
01:24 I've represented some of the most unscrupulous employers in Britain.
01:28 I have never seen anything like this.
01:30 To terminate people six days before Christmas, to tell them that their workplace is closing
01:35 and then to not even give them the clarity of a termination notice or tell them exactly how they're going to be paid.
01:41 I've never seen anything like this. It's completely outrageous.
01:44 So we're about to sit in a room with them virtually at four o'clock where we'll be meeting the senior management of the employer
01:50 and our message is quite clear. These workers deserve to be paid.
01:54 First of all they need clarity about what's actually happening with their jobs.
01:57 Secondly they need to be paid their wages.
01:59 They need to be paid the thousands of pounds in service charge and tips that's been gathered and they haven't been paid.
02:04 They also need the notice paid.
02:06 So these workers should have got a 45 days notice for the termination.
02:09 They weren't given any notice.
02:11 So they need that money and then if they're not going to pay that, they are entitled to up to three months wages
02:16 and what's called a protective award. That is where a company goes under and they don't give them 45 days notice.
02:22 The workers behind me, our members, are due up to 13 weeks wages for a protective award.
02:28 They haven't put their arms around them. In fact they've pushed them out the door.
02:32 Some of our members were escorted out the building yesterday after being informed that they'd lost their jobs.
02:37 So I'm Natalia King. I was a bartender at Virgin Hotels.
02:40 Last week we were told our jobs were safe.
02:43 Last week we were told, I know multiple people had jobs lined up thinking that something was going on
02:48 and we were told not to take those offers, not to take those jobs, that Virgin Hotels was safe.
02:53 Yesterday we got pulled into a meeting, very short notice, we only got the email the day before
02:58 and we were told our jobs were done.
03:01 As the hotel was closing its doors that day, we were all to be out of the building.
03:05 They couldn't answer us about pay, they couldn't answer us about P45s, they couldn't answer us about anything really.
03:12 We were all kind of upset. I know a lot of people were crying.
03:17 My manager Kelly, who's wonderful, was holding her giggle up because she was crying that hard she couldn't stand anymore
03:22 because she didn't know how she was going to pay her bills.
03:24 She didn't know how she was going to pay for her kids' Christmas.
03:27 It's five days to Christmas now and a lot of people don't know where they're getting money.
03:33 We all had just enough money to last us through. We were thinking we were getting paid and now we don't know.
03:38 We thought we were just going to get a new owner.
03:41 We thought that Virgin would make a good enough offer that the owners would sell.
03:47 And then we found out that the owners were going into liquidation and that the hotel had to cease operations.
03:52 That they had to stop all operations, stop all trading and that the jobs that we had were no longer.
03:59 That we were just to go home.
04:02 Everybody was crying. It was a very emotional day. Everybody was howling.
04:08 People were distraught, people were angry because whenever we had a question for the CEO of Virgin, they did not have an answer.
04:18 The staff were angry but mostly the staff were upset.
04:21 It's literally the week of Christmas and we don't have a job anymore.
04:28 Plus Vitality is just recovering from Covid.
04:31 We all thought that this was a surefire bet, that Virgin is a big enough brand that this would never have happened.
04:38 And instead, four months in, almost to the day, we don't have a job.
04:44 A lot of us opened that hotel. A lot of us were there from the start.
04:47 And we just had to leave.
04:51 We were told to collect our personal belongings in black bags today.
04:55 Give us our wage. Give us our severance. Give us our tips.
04:59 Explain yourselves. Why did you not take Virgin's offer?
05:04 I know myself personally, I turned down a different job offer for this job offer.
05:09 To come work for Virgin because I liked the brand.
05:13 I liked what they stood for. They stood for trying to change the industry.
05:16 But so far, they've not changed the industry. Not here at least, not in Glasgow.
05:20 So far all they've done is make people jobless. Possibly homeless because how are people going to pay their rent?
05:25 How are people going to pay their mortgage?
05:27 The hospitality industry has really pulled together. There's a lot of messages on Facebook.
05:31 Sorry. Just being like, "If you need a job, we have some openings, but no one is as big as this, so they can't take us all."
05:39 Hi, I'm Andy Thompson. I work as a sous-chef at the Virgin Hotels here in Glasgow.
05:43 We were working on Monday and so I broke in the press that the hotel was not being bought by Virgin
05:50 and that all our jobs were gone overnight.
05:53 We got told on Tuesday morning that the hotel was closing and there was no more work for us.
05:58 There were some Chinese whispers. It looked like there were secret meetings happening inside the hotel.
06:02 Heads of departments talking in hushed voices, but some of it broke to the staff and then two and two was put together.
06:10 My first inkling of the serious issue, I was in the kitchen working and we saw articles go up on the media online
06:17 saying that it was in dire straits. The management on site couldn't give us any answers at the time.
06:24 They called us in for a meeting yesterday morning, but just at short notice.
06:29 People didn't know what it was about. People were showing up for work to be sat down and told there wouldn't be work.
06:34 The doors were getting locked in a very tense meeting yesterday morning.
06:39 They sent us an email saying they would try and ensure that we're paid the hours that we've worked,
06:44 but nothing concrete and nothing set in stone.
06:46 I think when it opened it was seen as a huge opportunity, this hotel.
06:49 A big multinational, global company opening a hotel was an exciting prospect.
06:53 They wanted to do the best in food, have the best rooms, have it all looking nice.
06:57 So as you said, people did leave jobs to come and work at Virgin and they've been sold up forever.
07:03 Where does it leave you?
07:04 It leaves me writing a CV a few days before Christmas again.
07:07 The wee ones presents are bought, so you'll still get this Christmas, but into the new year it's going to be pretty tough.
07:12 I think times have been tough for hospitality since Covid.
07:16 We all know it's been a case of one thing after the next,
07:19 but it's definitely a shock still that it's happened so quickly without warning.
07:23 People are gutted, upset. There's a lot of anger, confusion.
07:27 A lot of our staff who maybe aren't English first speakers are sort of lost in what's happening.
07:33 It's not been properly communicated at all and everyone's a bit upset and angry
07:38 and wants to know what they're doing, what they're getting.
07:41 I suppose the best case scenario is we're paid for the work done and they honour the notice period that's in our contracts.
07:47 [Music plays]
07:53 [BLANK_AUDIO]