Having just surpassed 12 months, after rebranding as Savvy Hotel Group the small hospitality group consisting of The Richmond Apart-hotel (Liverpool), Sleep Eat Love Hostel (Liverpool), The Townhouse Hotel (Chester), Love Thy Neighbour (Liverpool) and Savvy Hospitality Academy (Liverpool) have seen their tough learnings from 2018 help deliver an impressive Covid inclusive, first year performance under the newly branded operations.
The journey of the group, having learnt from previous growing pains in late 2018 have seen their vision to be one of North West’s best independent accommodation providers return to profit, as they deliver an impressive first year balance sheet, across their multi facet accommodation offering.
Their success across their portfolio includes:
- Sleep Eat Love bringing Liverpool’s first 100+ bedroom “Poshtel” to market
- The Richmond’s flexibility of being able to book full Apartments, Hotel Suites or Hotel Bedrooms all under one roof, plus their newly refurbished Banqueting Suite
- The Townhouse offering 30 bedrooms, plus offering one of Chester’s first group Accommodation offerings – the Roman Vault & Amphitheatre Apartment party rooms.
This giving the group a unique and flexible accommodation offering across the region, helping them to weather the challenges that have heavily impacted the wider Industry through this unprecedented Pandemic.
CEO, Steven Hesketh adds – “The Savvy Hotel Group is a small, adaptable, fast moving business, our now close knit senior team of four (which was once as many as nine) has been on such a journey and purely puts the business health as the number one priority. The health of our business – which is fundamentally the three P’s – People, Product and Profit is what drives our decision making. There is no question this has been stretched through this crisis, but I am pleased to say we have only made a small number of redundancies to date to get us through Covid and worked with our people to jointly weather this pandemic through renewed employment contracts and alike to ensure the businesses health is always in a good state. Whilst, we still have a large number of casual staff with no hours, we really ask all of Liverpool & Chester to get back into enjoying their city they come from and help support us independents more than ever, so we can get our remaining team back to work. It’s a must, that we all push on attempting to get back to some sort of normality for the countries economic health, whilst driving that via the general health message, which so many local businesses are doing so well at leading on.”
Savvy Hotels started July 2020 with the exciting news of joining Best Western with our two key properties The Richmond and The Townhouse. Best Western have seen great resilience and growth through 2020 – and have seen numbers bounce positively, helped by the recent channel four documentary regarding their nearly 300 Independent owned hotels working together to push the brand to help all their businesses become some of the UK’s most beloved hotel properties.
Mark Stanley, Head of Hotel Development for Best Western Great Britain said: “We have a strong relationship with the team behind the Savvy Hotels brand and are proud to have two amazing properties in the north join the Best Western family of hotels. Chester and Liverpool are strong leisure and business destinations, so we are delighted to be working with Joe and the team to support the hotels and to help grow the destinations nationally and globally.”
Operations Director, Joe Little confirms – “2020 has seen the group connect with Best Western to strengthen our customer base with the added excitement of the remainder of summer seeing us at The Richmond undergo a Front of House refurbishment including a new Reception Area that includes a great new grab and go Food offering. We are also set to launch in late September as part of the wider refurbishment new working booths in the previous Reception area – that will allow customers private booths to work out off, on an hourly rate, which will include free Wi-Fi and free-flowing Tea, Coffee and Biscuits – a real “Get out of home or the office for some sanity” option. To boot we are also working with an outside consultant to bring a further new offering at the Townhouse in Chester, that looks to see launch a new afternoon/early evening Secret Garden in alignment with Camden Beer – this really will be something new for Chester’s hospitality scene”
Steven and Joe work in tandem with Claire McGuiness, Group Human Resources and Liza Waine Group Finance – and believe the 50/50 balanced board reflects the 21st Century needs of a balanced board and adds to the overall business health also.
Savvy Hotels are very optimistic about the remainder of 2020 as it sees the consumer confidence return and it brings to the table something new to welcome customers back.
*All venues are participating in the current Eat Out to Help Out – national government scheme.
*All venues are also offering locals a £50 Sunday – Thursday overnight stay rate until October 2020.
