The roots of Wren's Hotels

13 June 2003 by
The roots of Wren's Hotels

How would you feel if you'd just lost £1m? Pretty gutted, probably. But Goran Strok, the 55-year-old chairman of the Wren's Hotel Group, seems to have come to terms with it. Earlier this year this charming Croatian hotelier sold Cringletie House hotel in Peebles in the Scottish Borders and Auchterarder House in Perth, marking the end of his involvement with the Scottish hotel industry after four years of attempting to make the figures add up.

All told, Strok reckons his losses hit the million mark but, if nothing else, it taught him that you can't buy hotels for emotional reasons alone. "The decision to go to Scotland was an emotional one," he admits. "I fell in love with the properties, but they just didn't have enough rooms to make them work. I now won't look at anything under 28 bedrooms."

On the face of it, Wren's is a strangely eclectic portfolio. There are 12 properties in total: three in the M4 corridor around Windsor, one in the Cotswolds, six in Croatia, and two that have just opened in the Seychelles. All the properties sit under the umbrella of the Wren's Hotel Group with the properties in Croatia in a subsidiary company called Adriatic Luxury Hotels and those in the UK under the subsidiary of Wren's Hotels. The Wren's branding comes from Sir Christopher Wren, who lived in the house in Windsor that is now the Sir Christopher Wren's House hotel, the group's flagship property in the UK.

But whereas the Wren name may have clout in the local market, it could prove an obstacle to future global development. The straight-talking, suntanned Strok, who speaks English at a hundred miles an hour with an accent that is difficult to understand at first, says that in five years he wants to float 49% of the company on the London stock market. If that is the case, then he will have to do more to increase awareness of the brand name or create a new one, as two analysts and a leading hotel inspector quizzed for this article knew very little about the company.

Lack of recognition at this stage probably won't worry Strok too much, however. He's wealthy, certainly. He makes it into the most recent Sunday Times Rich List of the UK's 1,000 wealthiest people, with a net worth of about £35m. He's also well known in Croatia - his father was an army general and Second World War hero and his mother a painter. The young Strok studied law at Zagreb University and then became involved in professional motor racing, winning seven national titles and participating in world and European championships.

In 1977 he moved to the UK, working as a consultant to plant engineering and construction companies and buying a North Sea oil industry service company in Aberdeen, which he sold in 1992. But it wasn't until 1994 that Strok turned hotelier, acquiring the Grand Hotel Bonavia in Rijeka, northern Croatia, a country he describes as the California of the former Yugoslavia. Strok says he remembers as a child visiting these parts of what was then Yugoslavia and never in his wildest dreams thinking that he would have hotels there. "It would have been like flying to the moon. I could not possibly have imagined that my life would go in that direction."

The UK joined the portfolio in 1995 with the £14m acquisition and refurbishment of Sir Christopher Wren's House, a property with a fabulous location overlooking Eton Bridge in Windsor, which became the 39-bedroom Sir Christopher Wren's House hotel. Other properties followed, giving the group a turnover at the end of 2002 of £8.6m. This figure is expected to rise to £8.75m by the end of 2003.

So is Strok just another rich businessman who's decided that it would be cool to own a hotel? "Absolutely not," he responds. "Return on investment is really very low in this market, so I certainly haven't bought them to make lots of money. If you have a hotel as a trophy you are bound not to succeed with it."

Rather, Strok insists, it was national pride that was a key motivator in his decision to turn hotelier. From a war-torn Yugoslavia, the newly formed Croatia provided opportunities for those who were bold enough to grasp them. "I wanted to show that a relatively new country could put itself on the map and do things professionally," says Strok, his speech becoming more impassioned as he talks about his native land.

Despite his heritage, doing business in Croatia did not prove easy. A young country has untested laws, and bureaucracy proved a nightmare. There was distrust, too, among his fellow countrymen about what he was trying to achieve and why he was doing it. But Strok persisted, taking the Bonavia in Rijeka from a property with a turnover of £300,000 and an occupancy of only 20% in 1995 to a turnover today of £2.8m and an occupancy of 80%.

Has it been worth it? "I am a risk taker," he says. "I have never gone away from my philosophy that if you want something badly enough, you don't give up. People trust me now. They've seen that I have invested in the country and not just taken the money out."

There's still some way to go. The Dubrovnik Palace hotel opens at the end of 2003 after a year-long refurbishment programme, giving the company five hotels with 600 bedrooms in the Croatian capital. And work is due to start next year on a new-build property at Naasfeld in the Austrian Alps. This latest project gives Strok footholds in the Alps, the Mediterranean and the tropics, a combination he says he has wanted from the start and one that allows him to be in his favourite places.

And, he readily admits, this combination will allow him to indulge some of his private passions, including skiing and enjoying the peacefulness of the Indian Ocean.

Wren's Hotel Group

Tel: 01753 838854
Web:
www.wrensgroup.com

Chairman: Goran Strok

In the UK

Sir Christopher Wren's House hotel, Windsor, Berkshire
The Christopher hotel, Eton, Berkshire
Taplow House hotel, Taplow, Buckinghamshire
Wyck Hill House hotel, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire

In Croatia

Grand Hotel Bonavia, Rijeka
Hotel Excelsior, Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik Palace, Dubrovnik
Hotel Bellevue, Dubrovnik

  • Two further hotels and a restaurant with four suites have been purchased in Dubrovnik. They are not yet named and all will undergo a full refurbishment before trading commences

In the Seychelles

Northolme hotel, Glacis, the Seychelles (joint venture)
Cerf Island Resort & Spa (management contract)

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