PORTRUSH, NORTHERN IRELAND | Phillip Allen, the president of Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts, slipped into his seat at a high-top table just off the bustling lobby in the Portrush Adelphi hotel during Open Championship week and took a moment to consider how something so seemingly self-evident hadn’t happened until now.
“I would love to say we had this grand strategy from the beginning. There was a little strategy but also a little bit of dumb luck,” Allen said, settling in to tell the story of how Marine & Lawn has become the proprietor of some of the most prestigious golf hotels in Scotland and Northern Ireland before recently expanding to the United States.
“Business is good. It’s been strong from the beginning. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious, why wasn’t somebody else doing this?”
What Marine & Lawn, with the backing of AJ Capital Partners and its founder and CEO Ben Weprin, has done is create a portfolio of comfortably elegant golf-centric hotels that have been restored to their former glory.
The Portrush Adelphi embodies the essence of what Marine & Lawn represents.
Near where Allen sits, a small room with plush furnishings offers an alcove with windows onto the street, and the restaurant, framed by thick curtains pinned back to enhance the entrance, is dressed for dinner. Tartan, bold patterns and rich colors are intentional, to bring a bit of the outside indoors. If you’re looking for minimalism, look elsewhere.
Through a combination of vision, investment and aesthetics, the hotels are an enhancement to the experience that comes with playing some of the most famous courses in the world, including St. Andrews, Royal County Down and Royal Dornoch. They are not just places to stay but part of the immersive experience, as comforting as an Irish whiskey or single-malt from the Scottish highlands at the end of a long, satisfying day.
Currently, the Marine & Lawn portfolio includes the Rusacks St Andrews, the Marine Troon, Dornoch Station, the Marine North Berwick and Greywalls in Scotland as well as the Slieve Donard and the Portrush Adelphi in Northern Ireland.
Earlier this year, the company also announced it will own and manage the accommodations at Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club and Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club in Southern Pines, N.C., its first American golf properties.
The brand will grow but on its terms. That means identifying destinations that fit the vision and style that has been cultivated by Allen and the company.
“There aren’t a lot of areas of Scotland we don’t have covered. I can think of maybe one. We don’t have anything in England. We don’t have anything in the Republic of Ireland. We have two in the north. There are some pretty obvious locations we could still go to, a couple of Open Championship courses that still don’t have a presence near,” Allen said.
“Dublin would be fantastic. Maybe east of there. For our brand on the coast would be great. I think we can do a handful in England, a handful in Ireland.
“We can definitely do a few more in the U.S. I think the concept could work in Spain, in Portugal, you could do Australia. I’m not saying we have plans to go to those places. We don’t at the moment but the concept would work there as well.”
So, back to how all of this began.
Allen was hired by AJ Capital Partners in 2018 to focus on expanding the brand of Graduate hotels outside the U.S. The company had success with the Graduate brand in the States, a collection of more than 30 hotels in college towns around the country, each themed to fit their surroundings.
When the opportunity arose to purchase two exceptional hotel properties from Macdonald Hotels & Resorts – the Rusacks St Andrews and the Randolph Hotel in Oxford, England – the company bought in.
The Randolph fit the Graduate brand perfectly, situated as it is adjoining the famed University of Oxford. Though Rusacks is a short walk from the University of St Andrews, it didn’t fit the Graduate model.
“We could have shoehorned it into the Graduate portfolio but ultimately we decided that would be dilutive to the property. It’s so perfect as a golf hotel. Whatever theme you apply to it, in the middle of summer it’s going to be full of golfers because of its location,” Allen said.
“We decided to go in on the golf concept. I had spent a lot of time traveling to these smaller towns in the UK and Ireland. I noticed at a lot of these great golf destinations, the accommodations were pretty poor. A lot of times there was a grand old hotel that had fallen on hard times.”
It helped that an addition to Rusacks had already been approved and, when COVID-19 essentially shut down the hospitality business in 2020, the company was able to renovate its new properties. By the time the world reopened, the pent-up demand played into what Marine & Lawn offers.
“We got lucky in terms of the explosion of golf,” Allen said.
Securing the Slieve Donard adjacent to Royal County Down was an important moment for the company. It’s an elegant hotel with arguably the world’s top-rated golf course literally a short walk out the back door.
The Hastings family has a portfolio of quality hotels in Northern Ireland and had not been in the market to sell the Slieve Donard until Allen came calling.
“The Slieve is such a beautiful Victorian building. You’re starting with this great experience when you show up. We can’t take credit for that but what we’ve done is make the interior live up to the standards of the exterior,” Allen said.
The business model is built around providing upscale golf accommodations but without owning any golf courses. It’s possible Marine & Lawn could develop a course of its own eventually but, particularly with hotels in some of the most famous golf towns in the world, it works for the company to focus on the hospitality side.
“Most of our guests who are playing golf are doing so through a golf tour operator. We have really good relationships with a lot of them. Some will book hundreds, maybe thousands of room nights a year and some might book 20. They generally have the tee times. We also have good relationships with the clubs and if, from time to time we need to call in a favor, we can get some help there,” Allen said.
The decision to partner with Pine Needles and Mid Pines grew out of discussions that began at St Andrews with Kelly Miller, president of the company that owns both properties. It had become evident the accommodations needed updating and Miller wanted to find the right partner, while maintaining ownership of the popular golf courses.
It was a deal that both sides believe is in each other’s best interests. Work is underway updating the 63-room Mid Pines Inn, maintaining its classic style while modernizing the interior.
“These guys are incredible at their design work,” said Miller, who retained some design controls and approvals. “It looks spectacular.”
It was critical, Miller said, that the partner honor the legacy and atmosphere created by World Golf Hall of Famer Peggy Kirk Bell and her husband, Warren, when they began developing Pine Needles in the 1950s. Miller, business partner Haresh Tharani and the Bell family will maintain full control of the three Donald Ross courses at Pine Needles, Mid Pines and Southern Pines.
Outside on the quaint streets of Portrush, visitors pass by on their way to or from the Open Championship while inside the Adelphi the afternoon crowd begins to gather. There is a sense of celebration in the Northern Irish air and what was old is new again.
“I think it took an outsider coming in and seeing the potential for some of these things. If you’re British or Scottish and you live with it every day, you just think it’s good enough. I think it took somebody else to come in,” Allen said.
“My jaw dropped the first time I came to Rusacks and walked out on the balcony and looked over the first and 18th at the Old Course and over to the West Sands beach. I was in awe. If you see that every day, maybe you’re a little jaded. You wouldn’t think this is a great place to have a really high-end hotel that Americans are going to come and spend a fortune to stay in.”
All it took was a fresh set of eyes, some deep pockets and a classic sense of style that fits the game like an afternoon breeze off the North Atlantic.