A hotel in trouble rarely has one problem. It has a payroll line that grew around a rota nobody has rebuilt, a rate that stopped moving two years ago, a channel mix that takes the margin off every extra booking, and a team that has been firefighting long enough to stop flagging things. Turnaround work is unpicking that in the right order: stop the losses, then rebuild the trading position.

Signs a hotel needs more than a tidy-up

• Occupancy holds up but the profit does not.
• Payroll as a share of revenue has crept up year on year and nobody can say precisely where.
• The property lives off two or three good months and loses money through the rest.
• Reviews have slipped, and the proposed fix is always more staff.
• An asset sitting idle, or a building running a model it is no longer suited to.
• The owner is quietly subsidising the operation from somewhere else.

Where I start

With what already exists. The P&L by department, the rota, booking pace against last year, the channel mix, supplier and utility invoices — and a walk round the building with whoever runs it day to day. Most of the answers are already in those documents. They are just never in the same place, and nobody has had the time to put them there.

What a turnaround actually changes

• Cost. The rota rebuilt around real demand rather than habit, supplier and utility spend re-tendered, every departmental line given someone who owns it.
• Revenue. Rate and channel mix corrected, and the periods that carry the year properly defended instead of sold off early.
• Operation. Standards and daily routines that hold without someone standing over them — which is what makes the cost reduction stick.
• Model. Where the building is working against the business, changing what the business is.

Two that worked

An 18-bedroom Edinburgh city-centre hotel was rebuilt around a lean, technology-led operating model. Wage costs came down 70% and revenue grew 30%. Read the case study →

An Edinburgh hostel was carrying 24/7 staffing for guests who did not need it, and living off two peak months a year. Redesigning it as a lean aparthotel took out the fixed cost and the seasonality together. Read the case study →

Repositioning, when the problem is the model

Sometimes the operation is being run perfectly well and the business model is simply wrong for the building. A student development in North West Ireland stood empty every summer; run as a pop-up hotel for three seasons it reached 86% occupancy and over €1m in annual sales. Seventy-five vacant student apartments in Liverpool were moved into short-term rental, taking the return from a projected 11% to roughly 15%.

See all case studies →

What it is not

It is not a report. A turnaround that ends in a document nobody implements has cost you money and changed nothing. I work through the changes with the team that has to live with them, because I run hotels myself and know which recommendations survive contact with a Saturday night.

How to start

Start with a free consultation. Tell me what the hotel is doing and what it should be doing, and we will work out whether the gap is cost, revenue, the operation or the model — and which of those to attack first.

Turnaround is one of eight areas I work on. See all hotel advisory services →