Activities

Von Essen Hotels is a private company that owns and operates a collection of three- to five-star hotels that includes historic properties such as Cliveden and Sharrow Bay.

Three properties (Sharrow Bay, Buckland Manor, and Ynyshire Hall) are members of the exclusive Relais & Chateau group while two hotels (Cliveden and Ickworth Hall) are National Trust properties.

The company also has an affiliated helicopter business that will fly guests to its hotels.

Timeline

• 1996: Andrew Davis founds Von Essen with the aid of a trust fund set up by his Austrian aunt, the Countess Von Essen. The group has three hotels – Mount Somerset, Congham Hall and New Park Manor – by the time of its first major purchases four years later.
• 2000: Von Essen buys Ston Easton Park hotel in June and Thornbury Castle hotel in November for around £5m apiece.
• November 2001: The company buys Bishopstrow House hotel in Wiltshire off an asking price of £5m.
• November 2002: Von Essen buys Cliveden in Berkshire, and Bath's Royal Crescent hotel for more than £50m.
• 2003: Von Essen snaps up four Cotswold hotels for £16m (Buckland Manor, Lower Slaughter, Washbourne Court and The Elms), along with Lewtrenchard Manor and Dalhousie Castle (for an estimated £7m-£10m). In December it buys Sharrow Bay in Cumbria, the UK’s first country house hotel that dates back to the 1950s, for more than £5m.
• 2004: The company buys the Greenway hotel in Gloucestershire for £3.5m and Homewood Park hotel in Bath.
• January 2005: Von Essen announces a £35m refurbishment programme to upgrade spa and conference facilities over the next three years in a bid to boost business from the domestic European and international business sectors. 
• October 2005: Von Essen makes an offer in excess of £30m for Luxury Family Hotels, a four-strong group of four-star, family-friendly hotels founded in 1993 by Nigel Chapman and Nicholas Dickinson. Von Essen also opens the £2.5m Bath House Spa at the New Park Manor hotel, the first of a planned wave of new-build spas.
• December 2005: Von Essen's offer of in excess of £20m for Luxury Family Hotels (LFH) is accepted by more than 90% of its 200 shareholders. Von Essen plans to invest £7.5m in refurbishing the four hotels, which will sit in a separate category that retains the LFH name.
• January 2006: The group opens the first signature Von Essen spa, The Bath House Spa, at New Park Manor hotel and launches the Numbers spa products range nationwide.
• May 2006: Luxury Family Hotels (LFH) puts the Ickworth hotel on the market for £7.5m while Von Essen tries to hammer out new terms with the National Trust on the restrictive leasehold terms. LFH is obliged to market the hotel during this process because it promised shareholders a return on the sale of 160p per share by 30 September.
• September 2006: Von Essen finalises the acquisition of Ickworth Hall (the fourth Luxury Family Hotel property) after renegotiating the leasehold in an £8.65m transaction.
• September 2006: The group buys its first Welsh property, Ynyshir Hall, in Machynlleth, Powys
• December 2006: Von Essen loses a High Court battle for £165,000 in damages from its £13m purchase of Cotswolds hotels (including Lower Slaughter and Buckland Manor) in September 2003. The dispute related to completion accounts.
• January 2007: The group buys its first overseas hotel, the Chateau de Bagnols in South-east France, in a “double digit millions” deal. The 21-bedroom, 13th-century chateau has been managed by Rocco Forte Hotels on behalf Lady Hamlyn since October 2003.  
  February 2007: Von Essen buys the London Heliport in Battersea for £50m and announces plans to open a boutique, 70-bedroom riverside hotel there. Premi-Air, which runs the Von Essen fleet under a joint venture, is to operate the heliport.
• March 2007: Von Essen Aviation (which runs 15 helicopters and three private jets) buys the Premi-Air Aviation chartered helicopter and jet business from the Sir Robert McApline Groupfor more than £20m. The deal includes Premi-Air’s bases at Blackbushe airport in Surrey and Denham Aerodrome in Buckinghamshire.
• April 2007: Von Essen buys Hunstrete House hotel near Bath for almost £6m, bringing its total tally to 24.
• August 2007: The group completes a £12m deal to buy Amberley Castle near Arundel, West Sussex, from Martin and Joy Cummings.

Financial snapshot

Full year

Turnover: £42.7m (2004: £42.2m)
Pre-tax profit: £5.39m (2004: £5m)

Financial year-end: 30 June 2005

Operating data

Number of employees: around 1,794 to June 2005
Number of hotels: 25, divided into four collections

The Classic Set (historic hotels - 9)
Amberley Castle, near Arundel, West Sussex
Buckland Manor, Buckland, Gloucestershire
Cliveden hotel,Taplow, Berkshire
Lower Slaughter Manor, Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire
Royal Crescent hotel, Bath, Somerset
Sharrow Bay, Ullswater, Cumbria
Ston Easton Park hotel, Bath, Somerset
Thornbury Castle hotel, Thornbury, Gloucestershire
Ynyshir Hall, Machynlleth, Powys, Wales

The Continental Set (1)
Château Bagnols, Bagnols

The Country Set (10)
Bishopstrow House hotel,Warminster, Wiltshire
Congham Hall hotel ,King's Lynn, Norfolk
Dalhousie Castle and Spa in Bonnyrigg, Lothian
Greenway hotel , Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
Homewood Park near Bath, Somerset
Hunstrete House, near Bath
Lewtrenchard Manor, Oakhampton, Devon
Mount Somerset hotel, Taunton, Somerset
New Park Manor hotel, Brockenhurst, Hampshire
Washbourne Court hotel, Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire

Luxury Family Hotels (countryside family-friendly hotels with extensive leisure facilities - 5)
Woolley Grange hotel, Bradford upon Avon, near Bath, Wiltshhire
Moonfleet Manor, Weymouth, Dorset
Fowey Hall hotel, Fowey, Cornwall
Ickworth hotel, Horringer, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk (plus 11 adjacent self-catering apartments)
Elms Hotel, Abberley, Worcestershire

Strategy

“Von Essen is committed to growing its business through further acquisition and investment in the existing collection of hotels. The investment programme totals in excess of £50million and is expected to drive increases in revenue and value over the medium term, building on the solid foundations of the existing business. The objective of owning 25 hotels, with a presence in London, remains solid.
Purchases in France and Italy have also been identified as Von Essen seeks growth beyond the UK."

Source: Von Essen annual report 2006

Key directors

Chairman and managing director: Andrew Davis
Operations director: Nick Romano
Finance director: Stephanie Gibbs
Sales and marketing director: Greg Ward
Creative director: Andrew Onraet
Human resources director: Nick Wyatt
Property director: Mike Eldridge
Estates and acquisitions director: Martin Rogers
Purchasing director: Jayne Davis
Spa director: Mark Bryant

Contact

Ston Easton Park Hotel
Ston Easton
Nr Bath
Somerset
BA3 4DF

Tel: 01761 240 121
Fax: 01761 240 125

E-mail: info@vonessenhotels.com
Website: http://www.vonessenhotels.com

Commentary

Davis’s ambitions to grow Von Essen into a 25-strong group have driven a rapid expansion of the company, in which 2003 proved a bumper year that added six properties to the collection.

In the pipeline

• London Heliport, Battersea: A riverside boutique hotel at Battersea Heliport in London
• Thorne Island hotel: An international five-star hotel is to be built on the island in the Pembrokeshire National Park adjoining marine nature reserve and linked to mainland by cable car. Facilities will include a sea-water spa, a preview cinema with editing suite, and seafood restaurant hosted by a celebrity chef.

The group is also looking to expand its overseas presence with acquisitions in Tuscany, Perugia, the south of France, the French wine regions and possibly Paris.

It has also set aside £100m to gain a foothold in London.