Born into the business his father founded in the early 1980s, Pecorelli has positioned Exclusive Collection firmly at the top end of the market, steering away from what he calls “bling” luxury in favour of authenticity and original experiences.
That philosophy runs through everything from kitchen gardens and pick-your-own Pimm’s to industry-leading sustainability credentials, including becoming the UK’s first hotel group to achieve B Corp certification. Here Pecorelli talks about defining modern luxury, surviving tough economic conditions and why heart and soul really do matter.
How did you get into the hotel business?
I’ve always been a hotelier, I was born into it. My dad set the business up in 1981 and today we’re up to seven hotels, two spas, a golf course, a cookery school, a pub and three Michelin stars. We’ve evolved organically from a 17 bedroom hotel into one of the leading players in leisure and corporate meetings. My son’s actually working in the industry now so hopefully there will be a third generation, too.
How would you describe your position in the market?
We’re at the very top end, we try and differentiate ourselves with a little bit of heart and soul. We also try and focus on each property having a different offering with a spa, a cookery experience indoors and outdoors, golf, pub and lots of different dining experiences, but my favourite is the “wild swimming” at South Lodge.
Tell us about your environmental credentials
We were the first UK hotel group to be B Corp Certified, which runs through everything we do. We planted our own vineyard and partnered with another B Corp company, Ridgeview. So we make our own English sparkling wine and then we take the vine leaves and turn them into treatments in the spa, and we take the pips and make them into a body scrub. We partner with a company called Pelegrims, who make amazing luxury spa products. We’re an English country house hotel group, right, so why not celebrate the best of British produce?
We make our own apple juice, pressing three tons of apples a year. I’m not telling people you can’t have orange juice, but we try to influence customers’ behaviour without being preachy. We still sell Taittinger, which is amazing Champagne, but we sell 25,000 bottles of Ridgeview, and sell 8,000 bottles of Taittinger.
We grow so much of our own produce with some of the properties having restored the original kitchen gardens. We recycle or redistribute our food waste partnering with Olio, a food sharing platform. The same philosophy also applies to our meeting product. We don’t even put out single-use plastic pens, we use wooden pencils with seeds in them that you can plant after you’ve used it and grow your own coriander or basil.
How would you define luxury?
I think there’s a new definition of luxury. There’s still what I call ‘bling’ luxury – people still like Louis Vuitton handbags – but that’s not really our market. At Lainston we have an amazing kitchen garden and for one of our drinks receptions in the summer we offer a pick your own Pimm’s experience where people can go out and pick their own mint, cucumber and strawberries – it’s engaging people in a different kind of luxury. We call it sustainable luxury.
Do you sell your produce off-site?
At the moment, we can’t produce enough to sell externally, so it all stays within the hotel ecosystem. We produced 4,000 bottles of apple juice last year and that was gone within three months.
How big an operation is Exclusive Collection?
About three million people came through the hotels last year across meetings, leisure, stays, restaurants, spa and afternoon tea, which is still the quintessential British experience – if you don’t know what to buy granny for Christmas, you buy her afternoon tea, right? Last year, we had 85 per cent of FTSE 100 companies come through our doors.
What else sets you apart?
We have lots of land and lots of space. Every meeting room has natural daylight, which a lot of London hotels can’t compete with because their meeting rooms are in the basement. We have some beautiful listed buildings restored and beautifully created and a myriad of choice.
Do you have a flagship hotel?
No, they are all different, but our best known property is probably Pennyhill Park, primarily because we’ve got the England Rugby contract there. We’ve had the contract for 12 years now. They’ve got a £4.5m training centre that RFU built with an indoor pitch, an amazing gym and all the latest camera technology. It’s a world class, elite training centre.
Then there’s an exact replica of the Twickenham pitch, which the groundsman from Twickenham helps us maintain. It’s literally the same, down to the blades of grass. Depending on the international schedule, they will usually be there for around 11 weeks a year. We’ve had NFL teams stay and use the pitch, football teams and we also do private bookings for things like ‘dads and lads’ days for corporate companies.
South Lodge has also generated lots of interest with our new lakeside suites called “The Reeds”.
What other facilities are on offer within the group?
At Lainston we’ve got a cookery school. One of our chefs won Masterchef: The Professionals two years ago, and we’ve got a great relationship with the guy that won Bake Off the same year. They have become a bit of a duo now so we do Bake Off events for chief execs.
At The Manor House we have a top 100 golf course, a really tough course, and we can bring in pros to do coaching days and teambuilding games. South Lodge and Pennyhill both have very high-end spas, which are also brilliant for corporate days, offering something less traditionally blokey.
At The Manor House we have The Castle Inn, a wonderful old pub on a beautiful, picture-postcard street where they have filmed War Horse and Dr Dolittle. We’ve done pub takeovers where companies can book out the whole place for their teams and have a cosy lock-in.
At South Lodge we have built what we call the Lakeside suites. These were a million quid a pop to build, but they are incredible, with infrared saunas and hot tubs and indoor/outdoor bathrooms. Or you can go wild swimming in the lake, which has been really popular over the last few years.
How are the economic headwinds?
Last year was a good year for us until October and November, when everyone was waiting for the Chancellor, then as soon as the budget was out of the way things picked up again.
It’s a challenging environment when you take into account National Insurance rises, rates increases and food inflation. When you take into account the £3m a year investment in the properties each year, the margins aren’t great. But we’re continuing to invest and grow and I firmly believe if you have a great product and clarity of brand propositions, then you will do well.
Do you have plans to expand further?
We’ve always been based in the South but so many of our clients have offices in Manchester or Birmingham or London, so two years ago, we bought a beautiful Grade II listed property in the Midlands called Ansty Hall.
It was a real blank canvas – when we bought it the property was really underinvested so we literally ripped everything out and started again. It’s so nice to breathe life into a new property like that and it’s so beautifully located for those meetings in the centre of the country. So that’s the current focus, but we also have a few exciting projects lined up for 2026.
