Focus on Alistair.

Flower Hotels General Manager Alistair Flower was honoured to feature on the cover of the June edition of Focus Magazine, accompanied by an in depth four page interview.

The feature celebrates 10 years of Settlers Inn Hotel under Flower Hotels' ownership and reflects on the journey that's shaped not only the venue, but the wider Flower Hotels group. Alistair shares stories from his early days in Port Macquarie, the lessons learned along the way, his approach to business and leadership, and the importance of staying connected to the local community.

The interview also looks ahead to what's next, with exciting insights into the future of Settlers Inn and other Flower Hotels venues as the group continues to grow and evolve.

If you missed the June edition of Focus Magazine, you can read the full interview below.

Alistair swapped his trademark colourful hotel blazers for a sleek and stylish black for his cover shoot.

Hi Alistair. Flower Hotels is celebrating 10 years in Port Macquarie this year and looking back, what are you most proud of when you reflect on that journey?

How time flies. We’ve had so many wonderful moments over the last ten years. I’m super proud of how we have been able to reshape many of our pubs into vibrant community hubs, but I think what I’m most proud of is Flower Hotels winning National Operator of the Year at the Australian Hotels Association Awards in 2023. That was just massive for us. It’s a true testament to the wonderful team we have been able to bring together right across the venues. You can have great buildings, but it’s the people that make the pub.

Hospitality can be a demanding industry, yet you’ve built a business that feels strongly connected to community and family. How important have those values been to the success of Flower Hotels?

Clearly very important. When we look at the venues we operate, the baseline rule for me is that I want to make sure it’s a place I would want to take my own family to - and that is certainly the case with our pubs. For Renee and I, it’s not just a business; it’s a genuine passion project built on our purpose of connecting communities. That job becomes very easy when you live and breathe the community yourself every single day.

What drew you to Port Macquarie?

I had been running pubs down in Sydney forever, working in that fast-paced corporate environment. When the opportunity came up to purchase our own venue, we knew a place like Port Macquarie, with its strong, proud community, was the perfect place to run a business and bring up a family. My wife Renee grew up in Tamworth, so we already had regional ties. Plus, with her parents moving to Port Macquarie 15 years ago - actually living only about 400 metres from the pub on the canals - you could definitely say it was just meant to be.

You work closely alongside your wife Renee and other family members. What has it been like building a business together as a family?

As I said, coming from a heavy corporate business environment in Sydney honestly showcased to me exactly what not to do when running my own business. To me, a sense of real family values is incredibly important.

Renee and I are a little bit yin and yang in how we operate. I’m up the front, on show, dealing with the day-to-day hospitality side, and she’s out the back being the absolute glue that keeps the whole thing together.

But it really extends right across the operation. My brother-in-law Shane is our GM doing an amazing job, my sister Merryn is in accounts, and my father-in-law Peter even helped us get the bottle shop set up when we were getting started. When family is involved to that level, it becomes more than just a business; it becomes a lifestyle, and we hope those values come through in our daily operations.

Along with our immediate family, we work with other families as part of the core ownership of the business. Debbie and Aage Christianson are part-owners in all our venues, and we also have Arthur Laundy and his family closely aligned with us on TPT and the Mercure. Having those family-to-family partnerships reinforces everything we stand for.

Alistair & Renee Flower at Settlers Inn Hotel.

“When we look at the venues we operate, the baseline rule for me is that I want to make sure it’s a place I would want to take my own family to - and that is certainly the case with our pubs.”

Over the past decade, Flower Hotels has grown into a recognised hospitality group across the state. Did you always envision the business evolving to this scale?

To be completely honest, we didn’t - not even close. When Renee and I bought into Settlers Inn, we had to refinance the mortgage on our family home and scrape together literally everything we had to our name to make it work. I’d managed a lot of big pubs for other people, but I had never owned one myself, so it was a pretty daunting next step for us. We never looked past getting through that first stage.

Settlers needed a lot of work back then, and we threw absolutely everything we had into it. By chance, the opportunities to purchase other venues came along later on, thanks to a bank that was backing our vision and a local community that genuinely loved what we were doing. It was only then that we decided to double down and grow into the group we are today.

The Settlers Inn Hotel has become an award winning venue and a local favourite. What do you think people are really looking for when it comes to a great pub or hospitality experience today?

Ten years ago when we took over, we didn’t want to guess, so we actually asked the community this exact question. At the time, the overwhelming response was consistency. People simply wanted to know what to expect every time they walked in. They wanted great value, and we delivered that through our food. We became really well known for our oversized, quality schnitzels.

Moving all the way to today, those standards still matter, but it’s now very evident that people are looking for a real connection to community. With the way the world is, people want to go to a local pub where they can buy a neighbour a beer, celebrate a win after playing soccer, or just find a comfortable place to escape and unwind after a tough day at work. Settlers does that better than most because that’s exactly what it was built for.

Community seems to sit at the heart of everything Flower Hotels does. Why has creating venues that feel welcoming and locally connected been such a priority for you?

I’m a strong believer that with technology becoming more and more advanced, social media keeping everyone stuck in front of their phones, and people working from home on Zoom calls all week, the need for real human connection is becoming more apparent and necessary than ever. We are seeing this shift already.

To be able to head down to the pub with a group of mates and “check in” face-to-face isn’t just a nice thing to do anymore - it’s becoming a really important part of people’s wellbeing. The old stigma of going to the pub just to get smashed is long gone. You head to the pub for connection, a celebration, to relax with family, and to just have fun and get away from the daily grind of life. I’m incredibly passionate about that, and I feel very privileged to be able to enhance our venues to support it.

Looking ahead to the next decade, what’s on the horizon and what excites you most about the future of Flower Hotels and hospitality on the Mid North Coast?

I think the rest of Australia has now worked out that our region is a pretty amazing place to live. We are seeing huge population growth up here, and it’s going to be vital that our venues keep up with that pace and stay right on top of the trends and demands of the community. Because of that, we are progressively renovating and modernising our venues.

Some key things we have in the works include reintroducing accommodation back into the Hastings Hotel, alongside a DA to introduce a boutique distillery and a massive new playground and deck area to appeal to all the growing families moving into the area.

We also have a major DA going into Settlers Inn to literally double the size of the existing playground and make it completely all-weather, while introducing a brand new pizza and cocktail bar right into the improved playground space so parents can properly unwind. Long term, we also have the opportunity to put more accommodation in at Settlers, which is incredibly exciting for the site.

On top of the physical upgrades, we are really excited about introducing a new group-wide loyalty program. It’s going to connect the community to our nine venues even further and provide some fantastic extra value back to our locals who have supported us over the last ten years. The future around here looks incredibly bright.

Thanks Alistair.