Overall ranking: 42 (24)
Hotelier ranking: 12 (6)
Tim and Kit Kemp - Snapshot
Tim and Kit Kemp are the co-founders of Firmdale Hotels, which has built up a collection of six stylish boutique properties in London employing around 600 staff. The group made a profit of £1m in 2003-2004 on a turnover of £14m.
Kit is the group’s design director while Tim Kemp is the property developer and number cruncher.
Tim and Kit Kemp - Career guide
The Kemps, who are in their fifties, met while Kit was working in an architect’s, office in London. She and Tim, who had been working in the property sector, went on to develop a string of small hotels in West London offering student accommodation.
They set up Firmdale Hotels to open their first boutique hotel, Dorset Square, in 1985.
Tim and Kit Kemp - What we think
Firmdale Hotels effectively redefined the concept of the luxury London hotel. When the Kemps opened the Dorset Square hotel in Marylebone, the only other boutique property in London was Anoushka Hempel’s Blakes hotel.
Firmdale’s lead was followed by Gordon Campbell Gray’s One Aldwych and Christina Ong’s Halkin and Metropolitan hotels.
Like many pioneers of the boutique concept, the Kemps had problems enthusing the money men and were turned down by 14 banks before they secured the funding for their first hotel.
But the concept has proved enduring and Firmdale hotels run at near 100% occupancy all year round. Tim and Kit Kemp have amassed a fortune of £68m (including £65.5m-worth of assets in Firmdale) and have been awarded countless accolades for their achievements, most notably Caterer and Hotelkeeper’s Catey for Group Hotel of the Year this year.
Other awards include two Queen’s Awards (for Enterprise in 2000 and for International Trade in 2005) and the RAC Credit to the Industry Award 2004 for setting new standards of excellence. Kit Kemp was also one of 50 females honoured at the third Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World ceremony in 1999.
All Firmdale hotels are rebuilt and designed from scratch by self-taught designer Kit. This is a practical as well as an artistic necessity bearing in mind the property’s – origins – one was a former hospital, another a multi-storey car park and another a dental warehouse. Kit’s eye for detail ensures that no two rooms are the same, although she has developed a design signature in the mannequins placed in all the bedrooms.
Her style has evolved from the grand country-house hotel style of Dorset Square to the chic London design of Firmdale’s newest offering, the Soho hotel, which opened in September 2004.
The Soho, which won the Group Hotel of the Year accolade in the 2006 Cateys, was cited as an example of the Kemp’s ability to “reinvent the wheel with each new property” and push the barriers of hoteliers’ and guests expectations.
Firmdale has offloaded its first property, Dorset Square, along with Durley House hotel (which opened in Sloane Square in 1989) and four stand-alone restaurants.
Two London hotels – Number 16 in South Kensington and the Knightsbridge hotel – are chic B&Bs while the remaining four all have in-house destination restaurants. Three of the hotels also include state-of-the-art cinemas.
The Kemps have now begun work on a seventh property, the 50-bedroom Haymarket hotel with restaurant and bar, which will open in February 2007.
Tim and Kit Kemp – Further information
Firmdale Hotels profile from CatererSearch
Firmdale Hotels official website
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