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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.
