Hotels need leaders, not more systems

when you are in the role of a general manager of a hotel you have to treat that business and you have to feel like that business is your own you know the accounts that you submit every month as your profit and loss accounts have to you have to really own them hi everybody you know welcome once again to the future of hospitality on the unscripted hospitality today i have the pleasure to connect with claire from london rock partners and i you know believe you're going to be up for a great you know 30 minutes or so to really learn about not only what they do but more importantly the amazing journey that they've had to this point and how they're growing the amazing wins and certainly not only the path that got them here but also what they see for the future so claire thank you so much for being part of this and looking forward to the conversation yeah me too i'm also very glad that you said unscripted in the introduction makes me feel far more relaxed absolutely that's the beauty right it's just a conversation and you know just very fluid so yeah i think you know would be awesome just to learn a little bit about about you and your trajectory on how you know how you got where you are and anything you thought think would be great to share with everybody yeah of course look i think it's i think it's worth giving it a bit of context so i have worked in hospitality since my 20s i don't know anything else i just know hotels so i very much stuck to my lane and about five years ago i recognized there was a gap in the market and the gap that we saw was for owners hospitality asset owners who wanted something a bit more flexible than the traditional hotel management company someone who was a bit more agile to change younger dare i say it and who had the flexibility to work around what they wanted to do because historically hotel management agreements which is how we contract with our clients have always been very long term 20 years and they normally run in parallel to a franchise agreement so you agree to be a hilton for 20 years and then you agree to work with a management company and what we found was particularly after covid a lot of the owners were next generation owners and therefore their investment timelines were completely different to that perhaps of their fathers or their parents and they wanted to talk about 5 year turnarounds and 10 year turnarounds and we fitted a gap that wasn't fulfilled at the time and that's how the business was born really it's it's been interesting going from being an employee to an employer let's put it that way and i think that if we if we you know if we press fast forward we're now sitting in a position where we manage and work with 17 hotels across the uk we have a really good management platform which is built of really good people who deliver really good results and we have we've to date we've not lost that flexibility or that the kind of bespoke approach to what we do you know when i talk to current clients of ours and current owners of ours what they like is how hands on we are and how i only know how to do it one way and that's very much boots on the ground i don't think it's a remote service you can provide i think you've got to be in the weeds of it and you know traditionally we get called into hotels that are underperforming people don't come to us when everything's rosy they come to us when everything's a bit broken and the only way to really get amongst those problems is to really get into the weeds of normally it's people but sometimes it can be products and i think that attention to detail and that that getting in amongst it is what sets us apart so yeah look we're in a good place now i think we filled a gap in the market that particularly came up post covid but i think it would have materialized anyway and the business is in a really good place but there is a stark difference and the things i think the biggest thing is i didn't realize what i'd learn i thought i knew quite a lot about hotel management i thought can do this it's fine actually it's completely it's completely different when you own the platform and completely different when the responsibility only lies at your door and that probably has been the biggest learning as well as dealing with things that don't go according to plan which happens all the time and i guess the ability to to focus on the things you can control as opposed to things you can't you know covid is a good example market conditions are a good example you know look every owner wants us to fill their hotel this week is a good example actually you know look at the troubles this week and the impact they had on inbound travel into the uk which in turn affects hotels pickup which in turn affects your forecast all of those things are fundamentally out of my control but how you react and what you do to to counter that is the important thing as opposed to sitting worrying about the things that completely you've got you know zero control over and i think that's the biggest lesson that i've learned i think yeah so far so far yeah wow that a lot of a lot of great things here i wrote down a you know a few that i like to to talk about the let me see how i'll do this but yeah i mean you know i love like to your point you know kudos to you for seeing the white space and what's needed in our industry because i agree with you i think you know i worked being fortunate to work for you know large brands management companies and you're exactly right you know usually you know these contracts and agreements are decades long or strive at least to be but you know and like you have been in the hotel for you know my my only jobs i've had is on hotels so but yeah you saw a big shift right before the investors was really kind of very long term folks and there's still many out there that there are but there are institutional investors yeah yeah but especially if it's you know a family or a few owners that come together their strategy is very to your point right it's like hey three five ten years and there may be an angle right to do something an exit plan so how do how can you work with them on being more agile and so that yeah that's that's certainly a big need and and well done for seeing that but as you're talking and you mentioned you know of course people come to you and they have performance opportunities right nice way of putting it yeah and you have like you know you mentioned okay it could be product or whatever but are there usual some common denominators that you see among that you say usually hey there's always these opportunities for the most part within who you work with yeah i think with hospitality you have to look hospitality is all about people whether they are guests or whether they are team members with the right people there's not much you can't do i genuinely believe that and whilst the market is changing and ai is changing the way we work in hospitality at the front line in terms of digital check in digital keys digitalizing that whole customer journey there is still room for great people and i think nine times out of 10 when we take on a let's call it a troubled hotel it's leadership and lack of autonomy when you are in the role of a general manager of a hotel you have to treat that business and you have to feel like that business is your own the accounts that you submit every month as your profit and loss accounts you have to really own them and the only way that you can give someone that feeling of ownership is by actually giving it to them and giving them autonomy to make decisions and don't get me wrong it's not a free for all and there are caveats around that but we believe in recruiting really good leaders who are really good people leaders and they surround themselves then with a really good team and with that you give over a little bit of that entrepreneurial spirit and look you can work in a branded hotel in quite tight branded guidelines and still do lots of cool stuff and i think giving them the ability to do that and that's certainly how we feel about our team i'm not the best revenue manager salesperson hr person but we've surrounded ourselves with people who are really good at their discipline and i think that i guess that culture rubs off on the hotels that we manage and that getting the team right there's lots of things we look at from a cost perspective and there's always a real focus on top line we're very sales driven we believe the more you put in the top the better the bottom be and but it is that's led by people who believe the same thing and who understand that at the heart of hospitality is just great service whether that's delivered by ai or whether it's delivered by a human you still need a great human to lead it yes yes it's true it's true and it's funny how you can see that so quickly right i would imagine as soon as you engage with the hotel you know of course there's a lot that you have to deep dive to learn but pretty quickly you can see to your point you know okay do we have a good leadership here or do we have people where are the opportunities so yeah that's that's definitely important yeah and and tell tell a little bit to your point right you've been in hospitality all your life what prompted you to go on your own like how do you say hey you know time to do it i mean i'd love to have something really profound here to say to you but it's funny what a global pandemic can do to somebody no i think i was working for a big organization we definitely saw a gap in the market and that's what drove it there being this piece of white space and then not being a business model that we saw that was servicing that part of the market was a driver but also i think the desire to build something and to be able to service clients in a better way service owners in a better way than we thought they were currently being looked after and that's what the goal was to create was something quite bespoke quite niche that catered to family offices funds owners banks but that gave them that high level attention to detail and did you start your model like being fairly flexible to your point on the short term from the get go or was an adjustment as no that was it was from the get go it was from the get go and still to this day we are whilst i guess we're we call ourselves a full service business so we do lots of project work for people we do lots we do some light touch asset management we will do shorter term agreements particularly for owners who are looking for a very quick exit we support with acquisition so i guess what we've we went out with those ambitions but what we've learned along the way is actually it's really important to stay true to those because don't get me wrong i'd love someone to sign a 20 year agreement but in this market it's different and i think having keeping that flexibility has what's is what's driven our success perfect yeah that is that is pretty good and and how was your career path like how how did you come about like i i kind of accidentally fell into hospitality really and i think hospitality is a bit like marmite i think you absolutely either love it and you think oh how could i ever do anything else or you think these guys are all crazy why am i doing this luckily i was the first and i you know i started a career as a sales manager and that progressed through the commercial disciplines across revenue and marketing and i was with i was with a big organization for a long time i guess kind of as i found my skill set and then i guess i kind of wrapped up all of those skills i do think that if you are leading a team it's really useful and beneficial to have done the jobs that you are trying to influence and to that end i know when i'm talking to a commercial team whilst i might not have done the task yesterday i have in my career been exactly the same position as they are and that really helps add i think some confidence to the team when you're talking to them about how to fix a problem yeah and how do you compare the difference between you know working for a big brand as you have for a long time and then you go on your own like what kind of remains the same in a way and what is completely different well one is loaded with risk and one is not i think it's i i think it's the risk factor and i think it's the responsibility factor we have we have matured and grown as a business over the last five years and we are now responsible for lots of other people it's no longer just you know two or three people and the business is what we make it if our pipeline is low that is down to nobody apart from us and when you're i guess when you're when you're very clear on the end goal which is all which is which has always been to have a really good stable full of quite a mixed diverse group of clients which you are servicing to a really high level until you personally think you're there you just keep going and you know my to do list could be three things it could be 30 things but i'm the one that's dictating it and i guess you are constantly making and generating your own work as opposed to being in an organization where it's a bit more task driven but it's risk it's you know it's the pressure is very different but all self made all self made precious all self made yeah which is which is good and bad right i guess in a way is this so is risk or i guess your point your accountability not only to the business but actually with others now that works with you is that what kind of keeps you awake at night is that your biggest worry as a business owner or i think people is always our biggest worry we work really hard on retaining good people but good people always move on they always go that's kind of one side of the risk i suppose that we had not perhaps perceived but yeah it's mainly it's mainly people that are the sleepless nights and like i said earlier things that you can't control you've got to stay really focused on the things that you can affect and the things that you can improve as opposed to things that are just you know world events which no one which sadly i can't influence yeah yeah and you know your comment about people really resonates right because as you said earlier it's it's a people business and people despite what happens with technology right you still need the right leader and people around it to influence and engage with customers and all that and then your comment earlier okay you come to hotels and let's say i don't know the majority or many of the people engage with the customers you know the projects you work on there is people opportunity is that based on is there again a common denominator as to why some places don't have great leadership or attract great people that you could see or any thoughts in that area i think hospitality in itself has got some challenges with new talent and young talent i don't think we do a great i don't think we do a great pr campaign of making hospitality seem like a really attractive career path and i think in other countries they do it far better and it is seen as a very a very celebrated industry and if you are in a senior role in hospitality that's got some real credence and credibility to it i think in the uk we don't do that very well and i think if you asked most 18 year olds there would be very few that said oh yeah no i'd really like a career in hospitality because the assumption is that you've got to work 18 hours a day for no money and and in and in real life that's not that's not the world's not like that anymore there you know you can enter hospitality with little or no background in hospitality because it is a people led it's a people led business and there are lots of disciplines that sit you know we would call it back of house that have got loads of cross cross skill groups and also after having a career in hospitality i think if you can deal with a customer face to face whether that be that you know you've run you haven't got enough rooms and you've got to ask them to go to another hotel or you've run out of beer or you've run or whatever it is once you've dealt with that face to face customer interaction dealing with difficult situations there's not much you can't do and i think it's a really good learning ground for people skills in general and if you know if you look at hotels now if i think about hotels that we manage now and team members that we've had with us for five or six years particularly ones who started with us out of school or out of university the difference in their confidence and their ability and their lack of being phased let's call it that is phenomenal and you think you could walk into any situation and not be faced and i think that is under underestimated in terms of what hospitality can do for people in their wider skill set we just need to make it we need to we need to articulate better stories of people being successful because i i just don't think we do it enough yeah yeah i i agree i think your comments on you know the the uk perspective is the same as here in the u.s. right we do a very poor job i think attracting your talent and telling the story right because to your point listen there are roles that unfortunately we still can find the flexibility that people are looking for so let's say right here at front desk right i'm not sure if ever is going to get to a point where people have the flexibility that they can in projects on their right on their cell phone or apps to generate revenue which is right it is what it is but there is so much and i think you hit on a you know important topic i never thought about that way but it's so true right as i reflect even on my own journey and many people that i know i think i'm not sure of many industries that you get exposed to so many people so many different situations that if you were to move industries or go do something different just that talent and that you know muscle that you develop i mean that's priceless right because you're right you can deal with any situation anyone anywhere anytime and i don't know how many other industries may allow for that no and i think it's i think it's twofold i think it's it's dealing with confrontation which is always difficult but you know it happens in businesses and it particularly happens in hotels and it's the other side it's dealing with great customer service and being on the receiving end of you know dealing with someone's wedding or someone's celebration that that face to face interaction with a customer i just think teaches you loads of life skills i think everyone should have to do it everyone should have to a year in hospitality to understand i think yeah i think it's a like i said i think we do a a bad pr exercise in terms of looking at it as a really as a really good career path and were you a good student you were right you're pretty smart fairly okay yeah yeah don't be humble yeah so okay so you're a good student right so for example we got in the industry for different reasons right i end up in hospitality i start studying hospitality in brazil because i couldn't get into any other college right i was so bad in school that you know you know of course i like the people side and when i but then also they're taking anybody at the time because it's just starting to become a school in the late 90s in brazil so end up working great for me right and you know indirectly and and i think that's one thing also that it's important to highlight to your point about new talent is that you don't need to be you know okay if you're a great student a great brain like you amazing but you know if you just come with good you know you give your all right you're committed and you're willing to do it and you have passion you can have an amazing career right yeah and it's learning on the job which for a big proportion of people is their preferred way of learning you learn there's not huge induction processes yes there is a you know there's things that you have to learn but actually most of it is done while you're working which is the best way of learning right do it as opposed to learning or get paid to learn yeah it's not theory it's practice and i think i think for a lot of people that is the best way of learning and driving muscle memory is just from doing the tasks and i think hospitality is one of those industries that lends itself to that yeah yeah and i don't know about there in the uk but one nice shift that i'm seeing like for example in trying to attract new talent is here in the us almost any job that used to post years ago would require a bachelor's degree right i mean you know like a front desk manager or like you do you really need a bachelor's to do that job no right so that is being removed here and finally right because to your point as long as you you know either you have experience or is something that you can learn i think that's starting to opening up especially as new you know the new new generation some people are skipping you know universities they're just doing you know trade you can learn so much stuff on the web and chat gdp gemini you name it right you can get get a degree so quick now just some kind of on your own that i think it's it's nice to see that we are just in a moving and really focusing on the potential and the approach of that person versus what a piece of paper may say the same is true in the uk absolutely the same particularly in our industry theory is great but you have to be able to deliver even at a senior level it's still about people whether that's from a leadership perspective or a guest service perspective yeah yeah and what you know as you think about the future you know and where we're heading next within hospitality what are some of the things you think that will continue to be important and perhaps some areas that you think will potentially become important that we should keep an eye on i think what we're seeing in the market particularly in the uk is that the uk still remains a really attractive asset class to invest in hospitality we're seeing a lot of that shift away from traditional hotel setups to more capsules and pods and hostel models we are seeing still seeing conversion of existing buildings being more popular than ground up developments due to cost we're still in that kind of cost hangover but we're still seeing a real appetite for investment and for the market moving on with i guess with the new customer demographic and that sits around tech around efficiently using tech so using it for check in for digital key but enabling a sense of community so if we look at a lot of these hostel and pod concepts that are in the market they are brilliant but they are all building community space somewhere so they're all building a social space be that flexible working be that bar bar be that food so i think what's going to happen is that i guess the two worlds are going to collide so tech and the need for the need for automation and the need to not have to talk to someone about check in is still going to be there but at the same time the recognition that people still do want to get together no one wants to dine in a restaurant for one when there's no other people in it so you need that sense of community i just think the two worlds will better slot together i think whilst hotels were getting their heads around technology and automation it's been a bit clunky like oh let's take away all of this and just drive tech oh no hold on let's take away tech let's just drive all of the people i think those two worlds will come together and what we'll see is a more efficient operating model from an operator's perspective a better use of tech which is super important because it means we hit that younger demographic who don't want to call someone to book hotel room they don't want to negotiate price they just want to be able to do it on their phone which is fine but that same customer is also now starting to learn the power of being together spending time with people and they are keen to use mixed workspaces or mixed community spaces and i think that's how we'll see hospitality evolving in terms of new projects is those two things blending together better and then as you i would imagine a lot of the your customers you know profitability you know certainly you know a key component at the end of the day right why investors get into this business yeah and you know having labor as the biggest expense line how how do you see that evolving and you know for to your point on okay technology will continue to improve but you know we eventually we're always going to be you know a human type of business so how do you marry the two and what you know what are some of the trends you see on driving profitability without hurting right the customer experience i think when it comes to adding tech into the customer journey it's around anything that happens before you arrive at the hotel so all of those you know not that long ago a lot of these tasks were manual but those pre arrival emails that allow you to add all your information in pay and download your key are super important because that means when you get to property the you know it might be the one person that's in reception or floating around their job is only to host you and a host is very different from a receptionist a receptionist's job is to make sure you've signed your bloody name you've told them your inside leg measurement you've told them where you're staying you've paid you've you've had you know all of that is take is removed so that person's sole purpose is by just ensuring you're having a great experience hi good morning welcome to the hotel okay that's literally it and they are they are then able to kind of almost like human signposts they can signpost your journey and i think what you end up with is better people doing that because the role is the role is less clunky it's less tech based and actually they just become they take on that meet and greet we would call it in the old days but it's more than that now it's that kind of host role it's talking to you about it's being able to ask someone where should i go and eat where should i go and get a drink where's the best place to get a coffee because that person is not bogged down with admin because tech has allowed all that admin to happen before you've arrived and i think that's how those pieces will blend together yeah yeah i love to hear that because you're exactly right right nowadays you can see as a guest right as you know you travel and i travel it's interesting to see the hotels that are optimizing technology to your point right and then your arrival experience is so much warmer when you get there because it's not about the transaction the you know where's your card sign this form is more like hey you know and that engagement that relationship building and really feeling that warmth as you enter someone's house kind of yeah and i think that that will that will continue to grow there will always be there will always be a customer who does not want to have their key on their phone right and that's fine but i do think in the main we will move towards a model that is driven by everything that happens before you're arriving at the hotel will be will be driven by tech and then like i said it just allows that resource that you have that's limited because of because you're right because of pressures on cost but that limited resource you have will be there to be the smile the welcome the greet the advice which should make that sense of arrival much better than it would have been if you just been saying hi can i have your credit card and your home address and will help drive return right to your point that customer satisfaction yeah that is great yeah and then a question that i always have for entrepreneurs like if you had to redo your journey you know what would you have done differently knowing what you know today big question what would i have i think what would we do what would i do differently i think i would be i would spend less time worrying about things that were out of my control and stay focused on the things and i know i've said this like two or three times now i feel like i'm repeating myself but i think that's what i would do differently we are very clear on what the business objective is and staying focused on that at times is really hard because there's lots of noise loads of noise in the background and keeping i think i would i would remain even more focused on that and the the things you say the things you can control is that both what's happening now let's say you know outside of to your point what you can control and or worries that you have in your mind that may happen that you know never does or even if does it something that you can control is that both i think it's i think it's probably more of the latter i think i'm sure most people who start a business at some point have imposter syndrome and they just think this can't be right i can't this really and i guess if i did it again my hope would be that my head would be telling me that less often but i think i think it's a thing i think it's a thing that happens to everybody who's in a business situation and i think you've you've gotta you've got to be really clear on what you're good at yeah and and and and kind of stay true to your discipline stay in your lane and just and just remember that at all times and know that the reason that you have been successful is because you were good at what you did and you're not really trying to do anything that different you're just doing it under your own terms i think that's probably what i need to what i wish i'd been chanting perhaps for the first 18 months yeah that helps right yeah it does and then you know how do you deal with you know i'm sure you you have to have difficult conversations with you know your customers where they hire you and then you know either you gotta address something that is really personal to them that you know it's kind of sensitive or or to your point is something that you know like you is not like you don't see eye to eye in some areas how do you usually tackle that and and what what can you share with people that have have a debt on their job with their bosses or you know if they're entrepreneurial with their own customers i think you i think we are completely honest i'm very transparent and that is part of the i nearly said pitch but not pitch that's part of the part of i guess the the angle that we take and why we why we win business is that we are with there's no hiding from the numbers don't lie at the end of the day you can fluff them up but the numbers don't lie and i think we have we are very clear about where the problems are we're very clear about where the challenges are you know i guess a good example is forecast dropping for example the owner is the first person that needs to understand that and the implications it's going to have and what the actions are being taken to support that drop i think we see ourselves as advisors our job is to advise hospitality owners on how to get the most from their assets irrespective of where they are in the journey of owning and i think the only way to do that is to be really honest and to give a all i can do is give an operator's opinion i can't give an owner's opinion i'm not an owner but what i can do is say as an operator this is what i would do in this situation this is the things we need to address and play to their strengths look owners add massive value to conversations around hotels in the main be that through development be that through ideas that they've had but you have to you have to have curated that really transparent place where you can both give open thought without kind of being judged and you know by the time you get into a contractual commitment with a client you are very much on a level anyway because you've had months of conversation you've got to know each other you've been through the numbers and remember that's the important bit and if you start off on the right foot in terms of saying look we'll tell you everything warts and all you haven't got to do anything about it but it's important that you're informed i think that kind of sets the tone for it and that's how we deal with everything yeah it's the best way right transparency it's sometimes the most painful way but it is the best way yeah yeah it goes to your point right even if that then it doesn't happen the partnership for example right it doesn't happen and it didn't happen for the right reasons right because yeah yeah and then you know as as we come to a close you know what and you can pick which one to answer but what has been a really good advice or a really bad advice that you got in your career oh that's a good question what was the best the best advice was was probably don't celebrate until it's actually signed the signature means everything you know we we work in a business where there is lots of opportunity and we do lots of business development work as does everybody else and i think you know always keep your pipeline full is probably one of the best pieces of advice we've had yeah and don't don't break out the champagne until the signature is signed there you go that's so true never done until it's done right exactly yeah exactly yeah awesome claire well thank you thank you for the opportunity to connect you know really good chat a lot of lot of good takeaways for me personally as well i wrote a bunch of notes here and you know and congrats on the journey i know you're just kind of getting started but you know clearly you guys are an amazing path and can't wait to see where you go yeah i'm excited thank you very much good to talk yeah