Investing in a comeback hotel

What does it really take to bring a struggling hotel back to life?

Fresh paint helps. New carpets don't hurt. A refurbished reception certainly creates a good first impression. But the reality of turning around an underperforming hotel is rarely as glamorous as renovation TV shows would have us believe.

More often, it must begin with what guests barely notice. New tech systems. Faster Wi-Fi. Better lighting. Electronic door locks. A stronger sales function. A team that believes in the same vision. And perhaps most importantly, a clear answer to one question. What kind of hotel do we actually want to become?

A year after acquiring the Kings Court Hotel in Alcester near Stratford-upon-Avon, that question has shaped almost every decision Harpreet Singh and his team have made. Speaking on my Hoteliers' Voice podcast, Harpreet reflected on the realities of taking over a hotel that had been family-owned for 35 years, and what it really takes to transform a business from the ground up.

The story, it turns out, isn't really about buildings. It's about vision.

Falling in love with potential

"We were looking to buy a hotel for four years," Harpreet explained. "My partners and I came to this hotel, and we all literally fell in love with this place."

That feeling mattered. Dating back to the early 1900s, the Kings Court Hotel already had history, character and charm. What it also had was untapped potential.

Buying a hotel is often viewed as the finish line. In reality, it's only the starting point. The temptation can be to dive straight into cosmetic improvements, but Harpreet's team took a different approach. Before thinking about repositioning the hotel in the market, they first had to make it work operationally.

"When we took over the hotel, keys were missing for the manual locks, so we added electronic locks," Harpreet said. "Our infrastructure for guest Wi-Fi was poor and could hardly reach the end of the building. Now we’ve upgraded, and it’s 10 times better. There was no CCTV; now we’ve added it. Lighting was poor; we’ve improved that as well. We looked at everything, and we invested." IT has been brought in-house too, with a developer doing everything from website improvements, to building a bespoke table management system.

None of these upgrades will feature in glossy marketing photography. Yet collectively, they change how the hotel functions every single day.

A vision beyond the bedrooms

Operational improvements may have laid the foundations, but they weren't the end goal. For Harpreet, transforming the Kings Court Hotel has always been about creating a destination that serves far more than overnight guests.

Walking around the property, it's easy to see why. There are conference facilities, event spaces, wedding suites, landscaped outdoor areas and, tucked at the front of the hotel, a traditional pub called The Twisted Boot, which Harpreet has big plans for. "The idea is to separate the identity of the pub area," he explained. "People think it's a hotel bar. It isn't. It's a pub."

Harpreet isn't simply trying to attract more customers. He's trying to create a place locals feel belongs to them. Interactive darts may be part of that, but the bigger ambition is changing perceptions.

"The pub could become a showcase for the hotel," Harpreet said. "Come here now and it could become your favourite place, where you can come to celebrate your birthday, your wedding, anything you want."

Building the team before the business

Of course, a long-term vision means very little without people to deliver it. With the majority of team members leaving as the business changed ownership, Harpreet has created a new team from scratch.

“The most dangerous statement anyone can use in hospitality is: ‘this is how we used to do it,’” Harpreet said. Adamant that staff must be aligned with the new direction, he handpicked the majority of them. Almost a year later, there’s a 100% staff retention rate.

Creating the right culture is important, and for Harpreet, this starts with making hospitality a service first, and a business second. "I think we all need to go back to basics, understanding what hospitality is," he said. "It's a business, but we need to be hospitable. We have to serve people, with smiles, and go out of our way for them."

Harpreet believes always chasing efficiency risks removing the heart of hospitality. “There’s a downward spiral where people think cutting down services will save the business,” Harpreet explained. “It could work for a year or two, but what's the long-term plan? I think long-term, you need to have people coming in, experiencing the service and the quality. I might not make enough profit now, but once I have that fan following, I can captivate those audiences.”

The journey behind the vision

Harpreet's philosophy makes complete sense when you understand his own story.

Twenty-one years ago, he arrived in the UK from India with £500 in his pocket, and took his first hospitality job as a pot washer. Today, alongside businesses in retail, care and weddings, he owns Kings Court Hotel and has ambitions to grow his hotel portfolio significantly over the next five years.

Along the way, Harpreet has developed a reputation for turning struggling businesses around. "I call myself a fixer," he said. "I've always gone into an organisation which is broken, and I've fixed it. What can you fix is people. People serving people: that's the foundation of the business sorted."

More than a refurbishment

Hotel turnarounds are often judged by visible transformation. New interiors. New branding. New guest rooms. But the first year at the Kings Court Hotel suggests the real work happens somewhere else.

It happens in the infrastructure that guests rely on but rarely notice. In the culture that employees create every day. In a sales strategy that looks proactively for opportunity rather than waiting for enquiries to arrive. And in having a clear vision for what the hotel should become.

Perhaps that's the biggest lesson from the Kings Court Hotel comeback. Reviving a hotel isn't simply about fixing what was broken. It's about deciding what you want to stand for.