Building a Year-Round Hospitality Business: Inside St Austell Brewery’s Accommodation

St Austell Brewery is shaping a modern pubs-with-rooms model built on great people, thoughtful accommodation and a seamless tech ecosystem. We spoke to Kes Osborne, Head of Operational Excellence at St Austell Brewery, to explore how support from Zonal’s technology is helping the business deliver smoother guest experiences and gain the insight it needs to serve guests year-round.

St Austell Brewery’s Strategy

Stretching from Bath and Bristol, down through Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall to waterfront hotspots like St Ives and Lyme Regis, St Austell Brewery’s 160+ pub estate blends city centre energy with coastal escapes and rural hideaways. Guests get a true taste of the South West, with dramatic sea views, countryside walks, locally sourced produce and award-winning beers.

“I think our locations and our team make us stand out. We’ve probably got some of the best locations in the South West, right on the coast, on beaches and in the most popular towns.” says Osborne.

The locations matter, but the people are the key. St Austell Brewery invests heavily in training and progression so teams can build long-term careers, a culture Osborne has lived firsthand on his journey from GM to Area Manager and now Head of Operational Excellence. That peoplefirst approach underpins the consistent guest experience across a varied estate.

Understand the Guests

With such a broad estate, St Austell Brewery serves everyone from coastal tourists, families, business travellers and rural explorers, a mix that brings a pronounced seasonal rhythm through the booming summer period and quieter shoulder months. The challenge is to maintain consistency across all sites while navigating these peaks and dips, and to do it in a way that deepens the guest relationships.

This is where Zonal’s integrated technology has become increasingly important. As guest behaviour becomes more fluid and expectations more personalised, St Austell Brewery is using Zonal’s EPoS and PMS data, combined with HDI insights, to build a clearer picture of who is visiting, how they move across the estate and what they value at different points in their journey. By connecting room bookings with food and drink behaviour, the team can move beyond intuition to data-led decisions, from pricing, staffing and menus. The result is a more responsive, year-round operation that feels consistent and personal, no matter the location or season.

Why Accommodation Matters

Accommodation has long been part of St Austell Brewery’s identity, from its earliest recorded site, The Seven Stars Inn, through to today’s estate of 29 pubs with rooms and 501 bedrooms. Rather than an add-on, it continues to be a defining feature of how the business brings its South West experience to life.

“The real value of having rooms sits in the depth of the connection it creates. Guests stay longer, return more often and give teams the chance to genuinely understand the purpose of their visit.” Says Osborne. These interactions shape the guest experience and strengthen the sense of place each pub embodies.

Accommodation also plays a strategic role, helping to balance out seasonal peaks and troughs. “Having people sleeping in your pubs in January is Gold.” Osborne notes, adding that a stable room base helps retain skilled people on consistent contracts, so sites can deliver at pace when peak season returns.

Running rooms at scale does bring challenges. Seasonal demand requires multi-skilled teams, and remote locations can make recruitment and logistics tougher. St Austell Brewery’s response to this is to invest where it counts, and to structure sites so housekeeping, reception and F&B operate as one cohesive unit.

Technology Transformation

Behind the scenes, Zonal’s technology supports both guest experience and operational control. St Austell Brewery has long used Zonal tills, later extending its PMS platform across the estate.

“The whole onboarding team were really professional and handled the onboarding process with ease,” says Osborne. “They made it very quick and seamless when it came to creating a unified tech stack that integrated with our current systems.”

That integration now gives teams a single view of rooms and F&B. Practical benefits show up every day through simplified operations, streamlined billing and an easy check-in and check-out process. “Having accommodation and food and drink in one place is an absolute nobrainer.” Says Osborne. “It’s easier to use, it’s easier to take payments, and it’s easier to check people in.” With fewer workarounds and less confusion, teams spend more time on human hospitality, warm welcomes, good recommendations and the little touches that make a stay memorable.

Before implementing Zonal’s technology, a significant share of reporting was a manual and time-consuming process. Today, St Austell Brewery feeds Zonal data into Power BI alongside internal metrics, putting accommodation and F&B performance into one place. That shift enables cleaner tracking, sharper forecasting and quicker responses to what the numbers say, vital for seasonal businesses trying to plan staffing, purchasing and pricing with confidence. Just as importantly, reliable reporting reduces “noise” across the operation, resulting in fewer queries, fewer system-related complaints and more time with the guests.

Connecting Data to the Guest Journey

What makes the approach distinctive is that data is used to strengthen relationships, not replace them. By mapping out how guests interact with different touchpoints, from the initial booking right through to checking out, St Austell Brewery can deliver experiences that feel natural. Technology reinforces the human side of hospitality by giving teams context through a developing loyalty initiative and frequent offers, understanding who is visiting, why they have come and how to look after them.

Advice to Operators

The most effective tech strategy starts with an understanding of what will improve the guest journey and improve day-to-day operations. Choosing Zonal technology will reduce manual, time-consuming tasks and drive operational efficiency to allow staff to focus on providing a real authentic experience for its guests.

“When running pubs-with-rooms, it’s about making sure you’ve got the right technology to market to your audience and the systems in place to offer seamless service when they are here,” says Osborne. “Above all, treating accommodation as the engine of a year-round business that supports staff retention and community relationships in the winter, will let operators deliver at pace when the peak season returns.”