Hospitality is sold to investors as real estate with a yield attached. It is not. It is a service business that happens to occupy a building, and the building is the least interesting part of the risk.

Why we staff before we buy

A hotel or a resort is a promise about a guest’s experience on a specific night. That promise is kept by people who were hired, trained and retained months before the first booking. An operator brought in after completion inherits a building and a deadline and very little else.

You cannot retrofit a service culture into a property that has already opened badly. The reviews arrive faster than the training does.

What it has cost us

Twice. Both times the sequence was the same: an attractive asset, a construction programme that ran to schedule, and an operating team assembled too late to shape the thing they were being asked to run. Both recovered, and both took a full season longer than they should have.

What we do now

• The general manager is appointed before the fit-out specification is signed.
• Service standards are written by the person who will be held to them.
• The opening date moves for readiness. It has moved.

None of this is novel. It is simply expensive to learn any other way.