Man of action
Tall, tanned and slim, Nicholas Crawley cuts a dapper figure in the Regal Hotel Group's Newbury townhouse offices. He has an Eton education and a Cambridge degree in the history of fine arts, yet he talks somewhat shyly about his part in the success and recent high profile adopted by Regal.
In three action-packed years Crawley and his team have helped to turn around the fortunes of the once-ailing Regal Group, one of this country's few hotel-only companies quoted on the Stock Exchange. Trading at an £11.7m loss in 1990, the group has grown from just three hotels to 21, including a just-signed £28.8m deal for an additional nine hotels. There are now more than 1,000 staff.
The latest batch of hotels have been bought from Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries, to be absorbed into the "heterogeneous" framework adopted by Regal. Individual hotels are encouraged to exercise a high degree of autonomy. Staff have share options and each hotel has its own sales and marketing manager, a general manager and financial controller.
As a 21-year-old graduate Crawley joined the Lloyd's insurance market, following in a long family tradition. "I spent about six months there - dreadful!" he exclaims, with a certain amount of self-deprecating humour.
After that he moved to the Savoy Group, working as a management trainee. "I got bored after 18 months," he says. A short spell in the wine trade followed and then, at the age of 24, he helped found his own company, Historic House Hotels, with partner Richard Broyd.
The two set up with a single country house, Bodysgallen Hall, in North Wales, which Crawley says was in a "decayed but not quite collapsing state".
He adds: "To some extent we were pioneers in that market, opening Bodysgallen Hall in 1980, and running the operation ‘hands on', though we weren't the first."
The theme of profit and loss is one to which Crawley often returns. "We're here to make a lot of money on a batch of three-star hotels. We are responsible to shareholders so we can never have complete autonomy." But, he adds: "I've always worked in some sort of partnership and that's what I enjoy."
In 1986 he helped launch Crawley Wilson Restaurants, setting up three restaurants in London, including the renowned Dolphin Brasserie which was redesigned with the help of artist Glynn Boyd Harte. Crawley ran this project concurrently with his position as managing director of Historic House Hotels, which he eventually left in 1988.
By that time the company had received several awards, including the Queen's Award for Export Achievement, but Crawley had "become bored doing the same thing twice".
In addition he was brought into a property company, Parkdale Holdings, to develop a hotel division in the late 1980s, only to leave after one year in the wake of a hostile takeover bid. During the same period he also acted as chairman of Hotel Apartments, operating the Alexander Hotel and Prince Hotel at Summer Place in London.
The first two years of the 1990s, during the great property recession, were spent on numerous projects. Many of these never saw the light of day owing to "lack of suitable funding".
It was a period which set in motion his rise to the position of managing director at the reeling Regal Hotel Group, then suffering huge losses and a lack of confidence. Swift restructuring followed a Creditor's Voluntary Agreement, and the group is now well on the way to becoming a name in the business.
"I don't think anyone had heard of us one year ago. Now we are hoping to be a name to be reckoned with," he says.
