Next generation behind rise of Scotland's RAD Hotel Group
Stephen Emerson speaks with Aaron Kyle, sales and marketing director for Ayrshire’s RAD Hotel Group, about his journey back into his family’s hospitality firm and how he and his siblings are now making their mark
Aaron Kyle followed the job for life playbook, he studied accountancy at Glasgow Caledonian University, took a traineeship in London and qualified under ICAS, a respectable career mapped out by 25.
But, it only took him about a year behind a desk to become tired of preparing accounts for other people’s businesses when his own family was building one of Scotland’s fastest growing hospitality firms.
Aaron, now 34, runs operations and the head office at the RAD Hotel Group, the family firm founded by his parents, Robert and Vivien.
The couple started their entrepreneurial journey when they opened a hairdressing salon in a converted Cumnock flat as 19 year olds.
They then moved on to pubs before a sale to Belhaven Brewery gave them the capital needed to develop a hotel business portfolio which now employs more than 800 staff.
The group includes Lochside House Hotel in New Cumnock, which has grown from six bedrooms into 14 lodges, a spa and one of Scotland’s top wedding venues. They also own the Radstone in Larkhall, Dalmeny Park in Renfrewshire, Seamill Hydro on the Ayrshire coast, the Royal in Cumnock and, since its post-Covid acquisition, the Brig o’ Doon House Hotel in Alloway.
RAD Group sits in 83rd place in Scotsman Insider’s OMB 100 ranking of the top performing independent Scottish businesses, up from 98 in our quarter-one table.
The family’s business model works well and is repeatable, RAD focuses on buying run-down properties, completely renovating them, and then relaunching them, mainly as a wedding events venue. The Kyles work on one project a year.
The firms name is formed from its founding father’s initials – Robert Arthur Duncan – but a gradual succession is occurring within the family firm with Aaron and his two sisters, Mhairi and Jena, increasingly driving the group forward.
Aaron’s return from London was prompted by a phone call from Robert. The son recalls: “My dad phoned me in London and said, ‘How are you getting on? I’d quite like you to come back up to Scotland, maybe not right now, but in a couple of years, to join the family business’.”
At this point, mum Vivien was running marketing, HR, compliance, sales and reservations single-handedly while still operating the hotels.
Aaron came back, started in marketing, and took the head office functions from her piece by piece.
“I never disliked the theory or the business element of accountancy,” he says. “It was more that I was doing P&Ls [profit and loss accounts] for other people rather than contributing to my family business’ P&L.”
The origins of the RAD business and its subsequent success show what can be achieved when founders put all they have on the line and put everything into making it work.
Aaron’s parents had only been together eight months when they opened their salon. His mother put in £800 of savings from her job as a council secretary and his father borrowed roughly the same amount from Aaron’s Aunt Margaret.
“My Granny Jean was going off her head that my mum was giving this Auchinleck boy all her money!” Aaron recounts.
The family business dynamic was moulded in that moment, with Robert and Vivien both taking the risk and the pair of them determined to make it work.
Proceeds from the sale of the pubs from the couple’s subsequent venture in 1999 was invested in Lochside House Hotel which was then a tired six-bedroom hotel. The property was bought for £350,000 with the pair borrowing £800,000 to completely overhaul the buildings and surrounding lands.
Aaron recalls: “My accountant thought my mum and dad were crazy!”
However, if the acquisitions are his father’s signature, the look of the hotels is increasingly Aaron’s. RAD venues have a distinctive, contemporary look and the concepts, interiors and brand direction now run through him.
At Seamill, the Tides restaurant takes its cues from where the sand meets the sea, while the Sirens cocktail bar nods to local mythology and a long-vanished Mermaid hotel bar.
The acquisition of the Brig o’ Doon House Hotel proved to be one of the family’s most challenging. Locals feared RAD’s modern house style would strip the charm from one of Scotland’s most distinctive venues, so the design deferred to the building’s heritage instead.
Major RAD Group moves are made following collective family decisions but, Aaron admits, there can sometimes be a generational divide. He explains: “Concepts, we come up with. Sometimes it takes my Dad a wee bit of time to get his head round, because the game’s changing – with Instagram, with TikTok.
“The concepts for Seamill were debated. But it was a good thing, because it made it better. Sometimes it’s a majority decision.
“The meetings can be really challenging because we’re all so passionate, but it leads to a better decision because it’s balanced.”
Last July, RAD sold The Carlton in Prestwick when an unsolicited offer proved too good to miss, and the company’s strategy now is to move the group away from projects that feel “copy and paste” towards more illustrious venues with their own stories to tell.
Ten years out, Aaron envisages RAD as a family-run group spread across the entirity of Scotland, and he doubts the firm’s founders will ever stop – “I can’t imagine my dad retiring. His identity is the business and it’s his legacy.”