The Know Group Rebrands to Savvy Hotels

This last week, we finally released the news of us rebranding from The Know Group to Savvy Hotels.

I signed off with our PR company a specific release, which is the one below:

https://www.boutiquehotelier.com/the-know-group-rebrands-as-savvy-hotels-as-company-reports-strong-first-quarter/

I am however disappointed to see this has been amended by some media outlets without consent and sadly tweaking it to something that isn’t fully correct, which is a concern to me and hence whilst we have asked them to ammed, however this can take them a few days for it to happen, and in my opinion the news is already out there, so keen to ensure we aren’t misstating the truth.

I am keen to tell the world of our rebrand, as this is exciting and allows us to refocus and also ambitiously improve our offering as we move forward.

The release that was tweaked by some editors states:

Last year the group sold the Nourish spa and two cafés, Ameriesko and Love Thy Neighbour, all in Liverpool.

This isn’t true.

The release we did, doesn’t go into the detail of our past 9 months, which has been the hardest in my career. We chose the wording “disposed of a number of assets”, which was my most positive way of stating: We had to close some of our outlets and put them into administration, meaning people lost jobs and some creditors had outstanding invoices.

None of this, is anything I’m proud off and we tried to work through it, unsuccessfully. We tried to not talk about it openly in the press, yet I am also keen to see that people at least see the truth, and the tweaked articles imply I have sold outlets, which is not correct and gives the impression we have gained in some way and that no one has had any pain with our changes.

I wrote in the article:  

The new name and identity also comes following a period of significant transformation for the hospitality group, as it disposed of a number of its assets in Q4 2018 to shift its focus solely towards its accommodation portfolio.

Steven added: “We refocused at the end of last year and had to make some difficult decisions around our individual food and beverage outlets and central infrastructure, but ultimately, I’m very happy with where Savvy is now positioned.

This brief overview does hide behind several administrations and a restructuring of even our hotel businesses, all with the aim to retain jobs and to be able to continue to work and improve these amazing and profitable accommodation businesses that Savvy Hotels offer.

The Know Group sadly underwent growth at too fast a pace, and sadly with bad advice made poor financial and infrastructure decisions, that I can only but now learn from now.

I can only now retrospectively give advice to other Business owners: As a Director of your company, you must ensure you better understand ALL decisions relating to your business. We all want to give our team autonomy, support and consent to make decisions for the company – but YOU as the Director must understand and agree to them, something I didn’t do at times and sadly it has caused me problems, which is why The Know Group has fundamentally ceased trading.

The positive is, we began working on “Savvy” in mid-2018 before I knew of all my challenges ahead, yet now in mid-2019 “Savvy” sees us deliver a brand that looks, feels and is, ambitious and focuses on our core strength - Accommodation. I am pleased to put the past behind me, and as part of the many tweaks to the release before we sent it out – we also had a section that recognised that the challenging period would have been so much worse, however due to our key suppliers being amazing at helping us pull through. I feel they knew that the accommodation businesses are strong and that our open and honest conversations relating to our challenges, meant they could continue to work with us. Fundamentally they really did help and I can’t thank them enough, and we will ensure, we will be just as loyal to them moving forward.

In business I feel we must always be honest, whilst always being confident and pushing forward.

I am looking forward to focusing on our small group in a more hands on approach for the rest of this year and into 2020. Savvy Hotels plan is to concentrate on improving it's venues, employee training and overall employee & customer satisfaction and experience within our venues that we manage, lease or own.

Many Thanks!