Page 20 - Valor Africa Overview

LIZ MCGRATH COLLECTION

The Cellars-Hohenort, The Marine Hermanus and The Plettenberg are highly

regarded, privately owned and managed hotels in the Cape Province, South

Africa, and are all proud members of Relais & Chateaux. Tony Romer-Lee was

approached by the late Liz McGrath to join her in her quest to restore

profitability to the group after the economic downturn. His initial focus was to

improve efficiencies across the board and in continued periods of low

occupancies an improvement of R5m to the bottom line was achieved in the

first year. In the following two years extensive renovations to the hotels were

carried out.

By the end of the third year since Romer-Lee started, the hotels managed to

break even for the first time for 6 years. In his tenure ship as CEO, Romer-Lee’s

main areas of focus were, amongst others: ensuring The Cellars was reinstated

on the Cape Town map, with one of it’s restaurants, The Greenhouse, winning

Eat Out restaurant of the year in 2011; bringing staffing costs into line with

revenues; a complete restructure of the entire team at The Plettenberg in 2013;

introducing flexible pricing across the hotels; and negotiating and securing a

management contract for The Lord Milner in Matjiesfontein.