September 8th, 2010
More than 30 years ago, a large detached house, covered in ivy at the front, with lawns, gardens and a tennis court at the back, stood out near the junction of Oak Lane and Oak Avenue.
It looked like a Hollywood mock-up of an old mansion off Sunset Boulevard where a reclusive star from the silent movie era might live.
Today, the 38-bed Dubrovnik Hotel stands on the site. Part of the original fireplace is visible in the bar, and the tennis court is occupied by a £1.4m extension built in the early 1990s by the first owner of the family-run enterprise, Bogdan Basic.
He named the hotel after the catering school he attended in Dubrovnik, Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia. Mr Basic came to Bradford to work at the Victoria Hotel, and also to improve his English before spending six months in France and then Germany.
But he met his wife-to-be Maria in Halifax and stayed, buying up the old mill owner’s property and converting it into a 12-bedroom hotel. Mr Basic has since passed on; his wife is now the owner of Bradford’s biggest privately-owned hotel, and their sons Neb and Ned run it.
They both got degrees in business studies at Bradford University; but whereas Neb took a year out afterwards to go travelling, Ned, who was born in 1971, went into the family business.
Five of the bigger en-suite rooms have just been redecorated at a cost of £80,000. Armchairs have been tastefully re-covered and the wall behind each king-size bed has Italian wallpaper patterned to match the curtains of the big sash windows.
“Even in these testing times, the customer still wants facilities and the service,” Ned Basic said, before showing me the improvements.
Full story @ Telegraph & Argus
