The group that rescued ten Real Hotel Company (RHC) hotels from administration plans to refurbish the properties and invest in its sales force in a bid to survive the recession.
Focus Hotels Management, which is headed by Peter Cashman, currently provides management and management-services six hotels in London, Nottingham and Swindon, agreed to take on 10 hotel leases last week after the RHC collapsed into administration.
The ten saved hotels, which have a total of 780 rooms, are in Altrincham, Wigan, Wolverhampton, Hull, Hatfield, Chester, Northampton, Stafford, Blackburn and Telford.
They previously operated under the Quality and Clarion hotel brands.
Speaking to Caterersearch: “Cashman said the management company had identified the group of hotels it believed to be the ‘most financially viable’.”
He said: “Over the last two years we’ve been slowly building up the company waiting for the right opportunity to come up.
We’re planning to refurbish all ten properties extensively over the next 18-24 months, but will also initially work very quickly at rebranding the hotels, as the franchise agreement with Choice has ended, so we’ll keep the original names of the hotels instead.”
He also said he planned to keep the same 460 members of staff, and was putting a sales force into “every one of the units” to focus sales on local markets, as well as using large internet booking agencies.
“We’ve been successful in our management of the other properties there’s no reason why these won’t be successful as well.”
Focus Hotels safeguards 500 Real Hotel Group jobs>>
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By Gemma Sharkey
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