The engagement combined portfolio-wide diagnostics with forward-looking strategy to give ownership a clear fact base on current performance and future options. Services included:

• Performance benchmarking: Revenues, departmental margins, and cost structures were analysed across all major operating lines, isolating systemic underperformance and quantifying where EBITDA flowthrough could be improved. This established both a reliable baseline of profitability and the scale of potential upside.

• Asset-level reviews: Each hotel was assessed individually, integrating financial analysis with independent guest-sentiment data. This provided a granular picture of trading dynamics and repositioning potential, highlighting which assets could support reinvestment and which might constrain value under different ownership scenarios.

• Asset management interventions: Targeted strategies were developed to uplift value, including diversification into wellness and leisure, supplier optimisation, and rebalancing of centralised functions. Recommendations were sequenced to deliver measurable margin improvement within a timeframe relevant to either continued operation or a potential sale.

• Exit preparedness levers: Structural options — including contract restructuring, incentive redesign, technology investment, and portfolio segmentation — were stress-tested for impact, feasibility, and risk. These created a roadmap of measures that would improve both near-term operational performance and the portfolio’s future attractiveness to investors.

• Strategic pathways: Alternative strategies were modelled, contrasting a near-term sale with longer-term reinvestment and operator partnership options. Each pathway was assessed in terms of capital requirements, risk exposure, and timing, enabling ownership to weigh outcomes and align around a future direction.

The review gave ownership an independent, commercially grounded roadmap for decision-making at a strategic crossroads. It provided clarity on structural performance across the portfolio, identified interventions to enhance earnings, and set out structural reforms that would support either continued operation or preparation for exit. By linking asset-level diagnostics with portfolio-wide strategy, the work equipped stakeholders with a defensible fact base and created alignment around the choices ahead, ensuring that future value creation could be pursued with conviction and clarity.

Project Location

United Kingdom