Turning around a struggling hotel
Fresh bedrooms. New carpets. A lick of paint. Real transformation starts with a much harder question.
A short opinion piece argues that hotel turnarounds succeed not through refurbishment but through strategic clarity, using Kings Court Hotel's community-focused repositioning as a practical example.
Photo by Hoteliers' Voice Podcast/ Haynes MarComs Ltd
People often think turning around a struggling hotel starts with a refurbishment. Fresh bedrooms. New carpets. A lick of paint. But I don't think that's where the real transformation begins.
It starts with a much harder question: What kind of hotel do we actually want to become?
When I visited Kings Court Hotel recently, what struck me was the clarity of the vision. The owners aren't simply trying to fill bedrooms. They're trying to build a place that's woven into the local community.
They're repositioning the pub as a destination in its own right. Investing in spaces for weddings, conferences and celebrations. Creating reasons for local people to visit, even if they never stay overnight.
That's a very different mindset. I learned that successful hotel turnarounds aren't just about fixing what's broken. They're about deciding what you stand for. Everything else becomes much easier once you know the answer.
About Haynes MarComs Haynes MarComs is a hospitality technology marketing and PR strategic consultancy and in the past decade has supported and consulted leading tech companies in PMS, RMS, ePOS, booking engines, Marketing, Hotel Representation, CRM, and AI. Haynes MarComs focuses on commercial objectives to support the KPIs for real growth that actually hit the bottom line.
Author and publisher of Hoteliers' Voice Podcast sharing real insight from hoteliers and hospitality professionals in regular weekly episodes on Spotify, LinkedIN, Apple and other podcast channels
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