Activities
Maybourne Hotel Group owns three of London’s most luxurious and historic hotels - Claridge’s, the Berkeley hotel and the Connaught hotel. All are AA Top 200 hotels, with five red stars each, and each houses a Michelin-star restaurant run by Gordon Ramsay Holdings.
The company was known as the Savoy Group until January 2005, when it was acquired by Irish property investment group Quinlan Private. It was renamed after Quinlan sold on the Savoy hotel and Simpson’s-in-the-Strand restaurant in the same month.
Quinlan Private, which was set up by former Dublin tax inspector Derek Quinlan in 1989, owns some 150 office blocks, shopping centres, car parks and hotels in Europe and North America.
Maybourne is its primary hotel concern, but it also owns a handful of Four Seasons hotels in Dublin, Milan, Budapest and Prague. Hotels account for 21% of its €5b-worth of property assets.
Timeline
- 1889: Gilbert & Sullivan impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte opens the Savoy hotel in the Strand to accommodate visitors to the adjacent Savoy Theatre, which he opened in 1881.
- November 1894: The Savoy Group demolishes Claridge’s and reopens it on the same site in November 1898.
- January 1901: The group buys the Berkeley hotel, which opened at the turn of the 19th century on the corner of Berkeley Street and Piccadilly.
- 1956: The Savoy Group buys the Connaught hotel in Carlos Place. It originates as a property in Charles Street (now Carlos Place) that is an offshoot of a hotel opened by Alexander Grillon in Albemarle Street in 1803.
- 1986: The group buys the Lygon Arms in Broadway, Worcestershire, for £4.7m.
- December 1995: Faced with a £3.3b hostile bid from Granada, Forte calls a halt to its 14-year battle for control of the Savoy Group and sells its majority stake to other shareholders for more than £200m.
- May 1998: US Real Estate Investment Trust Blackstone and Colony Capital buy the Savoy Group for £520m . The group comprises the Savoy, Claridge’s, the Connaught, the Berkeley, the Lygon Arms and Simpson’s-in-the-Strand.
- June 2003: The group sells the Lygon Arms to Furlong Hotels for £10m-£15m.
- April 2004: The Savoy group is sold to Quinlan Private for £750m.
- January 2005: Quinlan sells the Savoy hotel and Simpson’s-in-the-Strand for about £200m to a joint venture between Fairmont Hotels, Kingdom Hotels International (owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal) and the Bank of Scotland. The group is renamed the Maybourne Hotel Group.
- October 2005: Quinlan offloads the 1,200-seat Savoy Theatre for an undisclosed sum.
- December 2005: Maybourne returns around £40m to shareholders as part of a £535m refinancing package.
- June 2006: The group announces plans for a £30m-plus project to refurbish the Connaught and add 34 new bedrooms. Work is scheduled to begin in early 2007.
Operating data
Number of hotels: three
The Berkeley, Wilton Place, Knightsbridge
214 bedrooms
Restaurants include the Michelin-starred Petrus and Gordon Ramsay’s Boxwood Café
General manager: Klaus Kabelitz
Claridge’s, Brook Street, W1
203 bedrooms
Restaurants include the Michelin-starred Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s
General manager: Sylvain Ercoli
The Connaught, Carlos Place, Mayfair
92 bedrooms
Restaurants include Angela Hartnett’s Michelin-starred Menu and Grill Room
General manager: Anthony Lee
Total number of staff: 800 permanent staff
Strategy
“Maybourne Hotel Group will be valued as the market leader for distinctive super-luxury hotels, differentiated by motivated teams of creative professionals, who are passionate about service and genuinely cherish individual personality.”
Source: company statement 2005
Chief executive
Geraldine McKenna
Key directors
Vice-president of finance: Malcolm France
Vice-president sales and marketing: Paul Reynolds
Vice-president of human resources: Sara Edwards
Director of marketing: Antonio Mazzafera
Director of sales: Brona Kelly
Director of reservations: Alan Palmer
30 Old Burlington Street
Mayfair
London
W1S 3AR
Tel: 020 7107 8830
Fax: 020 7107 8900
E-mail: info@maybourne.com
Website: http://www.maybourne.com
