Know it works,
before you build.

The decision to build, tested first

Before an owner commits to a project, the cost of it and the return on it need appraising properly. That is the whole purpose of a feasibility study: not a document to satisfy a lender, but a test of whether the thing should be built at all — at that size, on that site, at that price.

We build a business model around the answer. Financial planning is only part of it; the rest is a business plan and a marketing strategy that say where the demand will come from, at what rate, and what has to be spent to reach it. An owner holding all three can decide with numbers rather than optimism.

A study that only ever says yes is not a study. We would rather tell you to resize the project than watch it open too big.

Where the answer is no, or not yet, we say so early — while the decision still costs a fee rather than a building.

Master planning and the concept

A concept starts with the owner's vision, and our work is to make it practical. We come in at the first conceptual stage and settle the product the site can carry, who it is for, how a guest moves through it, and where it sits against the properties it will compete with. All of that is decided before a single drawing is finalised.

It also means choosing the people who will draw it. We help select and negotiate with the architect, the interior designer, the lighting, landscape and environmental consultants and the kitchen specialist — the right practice for the project, and terms written to suit the owner rather than the practice.

Then the plan itself. We provide space planning for every component of the hotel, front of house and back: store rooms, offices and staff facilities as much as kitchens, restaurants and public rooms. Back of house is where a badly planned hotel loses money quietly, every year it operates.

Out of the feasibility, the budget and the location comes the last decision of this stage — the classification and the standard the site can actually support. A standard set one notch above what the market will pay for is a cost the hotel carries for its whole life.

Due diligence, before you commit

Not every project starts with a site. Owners, lenders and investors come to us with an operating hotel to buy, an operator to appoint or an asset to value, and want an independent read on it before anything is signed.

We assess the asset, the operator or the acquisition on its merits: the condition of the building, the contracts attached to it, the capital expenditure that has been deferred, and what the operation is actually earning against what it reports. We hold no relationship with any operator that needs protecting, so the findings are simply the findings.