Cedar Capital Partners recently completed a four-year £85m transformation of The Belfry Hotel and Resort, a UK venue famous for hosting the Ryder Cup and British Masters golfing tournaments.
“Our plan was never simply a physical change. It was a cultural and an experiential change that would impact both our customers and our teams alike,” said Paul Harnedy, Cedar’s executive vice president.
The resort’s low season traditionally occurred during school holidays, with fewer meetings & events and corporate golf days. So one redevelopment goal was to take advantage of higher spending leisure demand.
“We wanted to create an environment that drives price and guest satisfaction: a true resort experience,” said Harnedy.
This involved a full upgrade of the “tired and under-invested leisure club” to a 5,000-capacity facility, including two separate pools (one for laps and one for families) including water rides and bubble pools.
From tracking three years-worth of turned-down business, the Cedar and Belfry teams knew that the Midlands was lacking a large event space, so they built a brand-new 920-capacity pillarless function venue.
The new-build construction programme also included 149 additional bedrooms, plus a full renovation of the existing hotel.
Transforming while trading
“The development was pretty intrusive,” said Harnedy. “As you drove in, you saw a massive building site, with another one at the far end of the resort.”
This was his advice for owners embarking on similar projects. Firstly, it’s not all about capex. “Take the project one step at a time. Okay, we had the plan and it took us four years, but that is because we were operating a resort and we wanted to do it properly and not impact our loyal customers.”
Listen to your customers and your team. “The customers are going to buy it, and the team are going to deliver it so listen to what they think. And change your plan, if required.”
Secondly, develop a coherent scheme. “How often do we bolt on all these fancy new additions that don’t have consistency or coherence? It was important to us to create a harmonious scheme.”
Thirdly, with major works, don’t be afraid to divide the work amongst multiple contractors. “We did. We had separate contractors for the bedrooms, ballroom, and leisure builds. No issue.”
Expect the unknown. “You’re going to uncover things you didn’t know about. Because of HS2, power availability was very limited, so we had to fund a direct electrical supply two-and-a-half miles to the local substation.”
Do not forget basic infrastructure. “How often do we try and cut corners or make do with what’s already there?” The Belfry required a new wastewater treatment plant on site.
The tech stack supports the new vision you are creating. The Belfry has moved to an ecommerce-style integrated booking platform supplied by Journey, and switched to a Shiji Daylight PMS.
Start the PR journey early. “The earlier you start, the earlier you’ll generate new enquiries and bookings.”
Was it worth it? Yes, according to Harnedy. The launch of the new facilities happened one month ahead of schedule in time to host the British Masters in August 2025. The Belfry has received £10m of confirmed bookings for the new function venue; new leisure club membership has increased by 1,000 to 3,500; and group ADR is £20 more than in 2024.
Throughout the building work, guest satisfaction scores remained high and the resort enjoyed “industry leading” retention rates of its 900 employees.
Renovating for a new lifestyle guest
Club Quarters is a hotel group with 12 properties in major US cities and four in London. CEO John Paul Nichols reflected on the lessons he learned from renovating two of his London hotels (London City and St. Pauls) while continuing to trade.
“The main reason for the renovations was that our consumer has changed,” he said. Where Club Quarter once served a predictable business traveller, the demographic and expectations had shifted to a younger guest looking for a “lifestyle, design-centric and contemporary” offering.
The hotels felt dated, but still in good shape and well-maintained: “We didn’t want to lose our base, but we knew we needed to develop a new customer segment,” he said, which meant evolving the brand alongside the physical buildings.
“It’s a journey we’ve just started. Eventually we’re going to do all 16 hotels,” he said, adding: “Projects are very closely managed by us. It’s the same when we build new hotels, which allows us to drive the cost per room to where we want it to be.”
The London works cost £15.6m and spanned 468 bedrooms across the two properties, which stayed open.
Like Harnedy at the Belfry, Nichols emphasised the themes of partnership, planning and listening. “Make sure you hire the right partners,” he said, crediting the London-based architects and interior designers Holloway Li for the success of the renovations.
Make the most of the PR (“It's pointless to renovate if you're not going to tell anybody about it.”) and expect the unexpected, he said, recounting how hidden wiring problems pushed contingency spend up to 13% and caused delays.
With hotels in both the US and the UK, deploying local teams with local knowledge made sense: “They know what they need to be successful. We need to give them what they need, frankly, and then get out of the way.”
His final advice was: “Don’t underestimate the intrusiveness of renovations when you’ve still got paying customers. You’ve really got to plan for making the consumer experience as positive as possible.”
The commercial payoff from the renovations has been clear: on a composite basis the two London hotels saw ADR rise by 15.7%, RevPAR grow 21% and GOP margins expand by nearly seven points, he said.
As a final thought, he admitted the hardest part of the lifestyle repositioning is: “Getting your staff to be lifestyle with you. That doesn’t mean getting rid of a bunch of old staff. That’s not the right answer. But you’ve got to train, train, and evolve, because otherwise it's not authentic. It’s not credible.”
All quotes taken from a development session during the Annual Hospitality Conference 2025 in Manchester.
By Ben Walker
