Webinar: Don’t hand in the Keys! – Innovation and survival in the hotel sector
Date: 23rd March 9.15am – 10.15am
This seminar provides 1 hour of professional CPD.
The hotel sector has had strong levels of growth in the UK in recent years, and has seen exciting innovations as a result – however, in light of the pandemic, it has had to switch to survival mode and adapt its offer and model.
- How have hotels survived, and what strategies have they adopted to get through the crisis with lockdown and the curtailing of international tourism and business travel?
- Has the government supplied enough assistance to the sector and how has the finance sector responded to the needs of the hotel operators?
This seminar brings together experts in the hotel sector to review the state of the market and explore how hotels are surviving the crisis. We will also take a look at what 2021 may have in store, and how events might lead to long-term changes in how the sector operates.
The seminar will begin with a presentation from market expert Marc Finney, Head of International Hotels & Resorts at Colliers International UK plc
Marc specialises in advising hotel owners and developers in optimising their investments within the hotel sector, in the EMEA and Caribbean Regions. His experience encompasses strategic advisory, through feasibility and valuations, operator agreements to corporate finance advisory.
This will be followed by a Q&A session chaired by Ed John, Partner, Howard Kennedy LLP
Ed heads up the Hotels team at the law firm Howard Kennedy. He is an experienced real estate and disputes lawyer with extensive experience of advising on real estate in the hotel, hospitality and leisure sector. Howard Kennedy’s Hotels team is an industry sector specialist group with cross-disciplinary expertise across the firm in funding and financing, planning, compliance, development, franchising and commercialisation, management contracts, asset acquisitions and disposals, corporate structuring and re-structuring as well as employment and immigration.
For our Q&A, Ed and Marc will be joined by Sarah Green, Director of HOTELFINANCE, a specialist debt advisory business focused on the hotel sector. Sarah has many years of experience in lending, investing and operating in the hotel sector, and has delivered tailored solutions to many hoteliers wanting to raise debt in these challenging times.
We will also have the benefit of insight from Nick Northam, the Executive Vice President-International at Interstate Hotels and Resorts.
His background includes 10 years as Vice President Asset Manager with Realstar Group, and 6 years as Operations Director for Marriott UK, part of the Whitbread Hotel Company.