Business Profile: Kate Oliver
- What is the name of your business and what is your role? The Hilton Bush Lodge, I am the General Manager.
- Describe your business in two sentences. Luxuriously comfortable accommodation, fantastic functions and creative conferences .
- How long have you been in business? I have been working in hospitality for close on 30 years working everywhere from schools to safari companies, for others and for myself and thrown in some random studying in between.
- How did you get into this business? I think I fell into it. People and food were the primary passions and it grew from there.
- What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced, and how did you overcome it? How to keep food for 8 people frozen with a cooler box and a fridge freezer more suited for to a weekend away for 2. Seriously I think people are the biggest challenge in any business and keeping a team working to optimum levels means spending time learning who they are beyond the work environment and ensuring they have space to be real people.
- What single trait/skill could you not have succeeded without? Sense of humour and an ability to know what somebody needs before they do.
- What is the best business advice you’ve received? Look after pennies and the pounds will look after themselves.
- Your secret to business success is? Ensure that the people who surround you feel appreciated and a part of the whole picture.
- What is your business goal for 2022? To make lemonade from lemons (and to increase bums in beds exponentially)
- Tell us one thing that not many people know about you? Why on earth would I do that?