About The Celtic Collection
Nestled across some of Wales's most breathtaking landscapes, The Celtic Collection is one of the UK's most celebrated luxury hospitality groups. They have a portfolio of world-class hotels, resorts, lodges, and event venues. And they unite each of these places through a single, unwavering ambition to create moments that guests will never forget.
From the iconic Celtic Manor Resort, host of the 2010 Ryder Cup, to the tranquil luxury of its wider estate, The Celtic Collection has built its reputation through truly exceptional guest experiences. And they’ll tell you that they didn’t get known for memorable experiences by accident. Each one was crafted deliberately and consistently by their people. A workforce that feels genuinely invested in, valued, and inspired to give their best.
It’s where philosophy meets business strategy. And it’s a partnership that begins long before a guest steps through any of their doors. The Celtic Collection understands that the journey to an unforgettable guest experience starts with the employee experience.
Every interaction a guest has, whether at check-in, at the restaurant table, on the fairway, or in a conference suite is shaped by the confidence, capability, and engagement of the people on the other side of it. Invest in your people, and the guest experience takes care of itself. Neglect them, and no amount of luxury décor or fine dining will bridge the gap.
It's this conviction to doing right by their people that drives The Celtic Collection's approach to learning, development, and employee engagement, and it’s this conviction that brought the organization to partner with Cornerstone.
The challenge
The Celtic Collection had never been an organization content to stand still. Its commitment to people’s development was genuine and long-standing. It’s a commitment built on structured survey frameworks aligned to Gallup methodologies, internal training programs, and a desire to understand and act on the employee voice.
But ambition, by its nature, reveals new frontiers. As The Celtic Collection grew in scale, complexity, and expectations, it became clear that the existing approach to learning and engagement, while solid, was no longer sufficient to meet the demands of the business or the aspirations of their people.
Learning was happening but not always landing
The Celtic Collection delivered training content, completed inductions, and put development programs in place, but the organization lacked the visibility to know with confidence whether the right people were receiving the right development at the right time. Consistency across properties was difficult to maintain. Managers, in particular, were often navigating their roles with limited access to the structured leadership development that would equip them to lead high-performing, guest-focused teams.
Engagement data only told half the story
Quantitative survey data provided reliable trend lines and benchmarks as a valuable foundation, but it could not explain why scores moved in the direction they did. It also couldn’t surface the day-to-day experiences, frustrations, or aspirations that sat beneath the numbers. The Celtic Collective needed insights that could explain the drivers of engagement.
The pace of insight lagged the pace of the business
Consolidating survey outputs across multiple sites was a manual, resource-intensive process. Weeks could pass between the capture of employee feedback and the point at which leaders could act on it. This delay diminished the relevance of the insight and limited its commercial impact.
The question The Celtic Collection found itself asking was not whether to invest in its people. That answer had always been yes. The question was: “How do we make that investment smarter, more targeted, and more directly connected to the outcomes that matter most for our employees and guests?”
Why Cornerstone
The Celtic Collection needed a software platform that was also a strategic partner that could help them connect the dots between learning, development, engagement, and guest experience in a way that was coherent, scalable, and genuinely built for the long term. That partner was Cornerstone.
Thanks to Cornerstone, we have been able to move from a process that traditionally involved manual data consolidation and lengthy analysis to one where we can access clear, structured, and actionable insight within hours of a survey closing.”
Tracy Israel
Director of Talent & Development, The Celtic Collection
Learning that reaches every employee and inspires them
At the heart of the partnership is Cornerstone learning solutions. With this world-class platform, The Celtic Collection could design, deliver, and manage learning experiences across its entire workforce with consistency, clarity, and scale. From front-of-house teams and kitchen staff to department managers and senior leaders, they could cover their entre workforce.
Through the platform, employees can access structured development pathways tailored to their role, level, and individual ambitions.
- Induction programs are standardized and trackable
- Compliance training is managed efficiently, removing administrative burden from operational teams
- A rich library of skills-based and leadership content ensures that development continues throughout every stage of an employee's journey.
For the management team, this has been transformative. Leadership development at The Celtic Collection is no longer dependent on ad hoc training days or the availability of internal coaches. Through Cornerstone, managers have access to curated learning journeys designed to strengthen the capabilities that matter most in a luxury hospitality environment: coaching and giving feedback, building team culture, managing performance, and above all leading in a way that inspires the guest-centered behaviours the organization is built upon.
When managers are better equipped, their teams perform better. And when teams perform better, guests notice. This is the virtuous cycle that Cornerstone helps The Celtic Collection sustain.
AI-driven insight that closes the gap between scores and stories
Alongside its learning capability, improved employee surveys enabled The Celtic Collection to fundamentally transform the way it listens to its workforce through an AI-powered approach to employee engagement that goes far beyond the traditional survey.
The solution combines structured quantitative survey questions with AI-led qualitative interviews. These are managed in different languages and tailored to each individual employee's responses. Following completion of the initial survey, The AI assistant guides employees directly into a short, conversational experience with an AI assistant. These conversations enable the organization to capture nuanced, contextual feedback at scale, without the overhead of manual interviews or focus groups.
Critically, the AI assistant is configured to reflect The Celtic Collection's own tone of voice ensuring that interactions feel natural, on-brand, and consistent with the culture they work so hard to cultivate. They can capture responses in any preferred language, reinforcing inclusivity across a diverse, multi-site workforce and ensuring that every employee, regardless of background or role, has an equal opportunity to be heard.
The result is an engagement process that employees want to participate in and insights that leaders can act upon.
Connecting insight to action
This partnership is truly powerful because of it’s connections.
- When AI-driven surveys surface a recognition gap in a particular department, Cornerstone learning solutions deploy targeted coaching content for the managers responsible
- When qualitative feedback reveals inconsistencies in onboarding experiences across properties, Cornerstone updates structured induction pathways and re-deploys them at pace
- When leadership visibility is identified as a driver of disengagement, Cornerstone directs development content to those who need it most
This is the difference between people data and people intelligence. And it‘s what allows The Celtic Collection to make their workforce investments count. They find success in employee engagement scores and in the guest experiences that flow directly from them.
With a 10-point uplift in engagement already visible and participation rates exceeding 90%, we can see that it’s not only delivering insight, it’s delivering results.”
Alison Bates
Group People Director, The Celtic Collection
Results
The impact of The Celtic Collection's partnership with Cornerstone has been immediate, measurable, and meaningful both in the quality of insights and tangible outcomes across the workforce.
A 10-point uplift in employee engagement
Properties achieved a 10-point increase in employee engagement, marking a clear and significant shift from previously flat results. This uplift reflected the improved workforce sentiment and stronger day-to-day stability across teams. It also carries substantial business implications:
- Higher engagement supports improved retention, more consistent service delivery, and stronger guest experience outcomes
- Estimated savings of approximately £420,000 GBP (based on reduced staff turnover from 30% to 20%, a 1,500-person workforce, an average salary of £28,000, and a replacement cost of 10%)
Engagement now exceeds 90%
Response rates to employee surveys rose dramatically, frequently exceeding 90% and, in some cases, doubling previous levels. This steep improvement in participation provides The Celtic Collection with a far more complete and representative view of their workforce:
- Increasing confidence in decision-making
- Reducing reliance on assumptions
- Ensuring that actions are grounded in data that reflects employee experience across all teams and locations
Reporting took weeks, now takes hours
Perhaps the most operationally significant outcome was the transformation in reporting speed. Analysis that previously required days or weeks of manual consolidation was reduced to a matter of hours. The platform was now generating comprehensive outputs, including sentiment analysis, keyword trends, and prioritized recommendations in real time. This enabled their leadership to respond quickly, shorten decision cycles, and address critical issues before they escalate.
Deeper insights and more targeted actions
By moving beyond surface-level metrics, they identified the specific drivers behind engagement scores, including recognition gaps, leadership visibility, and inconsistencies in training provision. This enabled them to implement far more targeted and effective interventions, reducing time and resource spent on broad initiatives with limited impact and focusing effort where it will make the greatest difference.
Uncovered hidden risks before they escalate
The qualitative layer of the engagement process surfaced risks that would not have been visible through survey data alone, including team-level disengagement, uneven experiences across departments, and perceptions of unfairness that had previously gone undetected. Early identification of these risks supported their need for proactive management, protected retention, and helped maintain consistent performance across locations.
The ability to capture feedback in our own tone of voice, in multiple languages, and then explore it further through real-time follow-up questioning has given us a much richer understanding of our workforce and significantly improved our ability to respond in a timely and meaningful way.”
Tracy Israel
Director of Talent & Development, The Celtic Collection
Results at a glance
- 90% participation rate in employee surveys, resulting in higher employee satisfaction and targeted training
- 10-point employee engagement uplift
- Reduced staff turnover from 30% to 20%
- Targeted learning and development instead of broad assumptions
- Estimated retention and productivity value exceeded £420K
Looking ahead
The Celtic Collection has always believed that exceptional guest experiences are built from the inside out. What this partnership with Cornerstone has done is give that belief structure, system, and scalability it never previously had.
Following the initial rollout in December 2025, the approach is now being expanded for a second hybrid AI-study with plans to reach more than 1,500 employees and enable even deeper comparisons, insights and improvements.
The learning platform will continue to evolve with:
- Increasingly personalized development pathways
- Deeper integration between engagement insight and targeted content deployment
- Ever-sharper focus on equipping managers with the skills to lead guest-centric, high-performing teams
The estimated retention and productivity value already exceeds £420,000 on conservative assumptions. But the true value of this investment is captured in:
- Every guest who returns because the experience exceeded their expectations
- Every employee who stays because they feel genuinely developed and heard
- Every manager who leads with greater confidence because they have been given the tools to do so
This is what investing in people looks like when it’s done with ambition and rigor. And for The Celtic Collection, it’s only the beginning.
