Meet the Exhibitor: SAVVY Collective

Q&A With Steven Hesketh, Founder & CEO, the award-winning hotelier, hospitality operator and entrepreneur, and founder of SAVVY Collective will be attending IHS next month.

Here, Steven answers questions about Savvy Collective’ recent relaunch, the company's specialism in management contracts and consultancy, and why he believes the sector needs a dedicated Government ministry.

Q: For anyone who doesn't know SAVVY Collective, what does the business do?

SAVVY Collective is the intelligent partner for owner-led hotels, hospitality, leisure, events and lifestyle businesses.

We were built from ownership and operational experience, not consultancy theory, so we understand the challenges our clients face because we have lived them ourselves.

We combine strategic thinking with practical expertise to help businesses perform better, develop their people, enhance guest experiences and deliver sustainable profitability.

We work with hotels, food and beverage venues, social hubs, attractions, events and lifestyle-led destinations, typically up to around 100 keys, units or equivalent scale.

We want SAVVY Collective to become the trusted choice for owners who need serious support without sacrificing what makes their business unique.

We have seen first-hand what happens when independent operators are left without the right support: good businesses struggle, great teams leave, and the character that made those places special gets lost. That is exactly what SAVVY exists to prevent.

Q: What makes SAVVY different from a typical management company?

The business has been shaped by the realities of running family hotels, the financial pressures, the staffing challenges, the community relationships that no management manual fully captures. That ethos runs through the company itself.

My wife and our three children each play an active role in delivering SAVVY's services, which is a deliberate reflection of the values we bring to clients.

We are built around sharp thinking, people power, family-grown experience, local connections, collaborative partnerships, agility and value-driven decisions.

Everything we do is rooted in the belief that success happens when people, product, place and profit work together.

Q: SAVVY operates across four core pillars. What are they?

People, Experiences, Performance and Resilience. People means building engaged teams and developing leadership capability.

Experiences means delivering memorable guest journeys that drive advocacy and reputation. Performance means improving commercial outcomes through operational excellence, revenue growth and profitability.

Resilience means creating sustainable businesses with strong foundations.

Those four pillars sit behind everything we deliver, whatever service line a client comes to us through.

Q: Why does SAVVY Collective specialise in management contracts and consultancy specifically, rather than a broader hospitality offering?

Those are two of our five service lines, and together they cover the range of what an operator might need.

SAVVY Management provides independent hotels with full operating platform support, hotel representation, commercial performance, people-first leadership and financial discipline, while keeping owners firmly in control.

SAVVY Consultancy delivers focused expertise ranging from three-day operational health checks to long-term strategic partnerships, repositioning projects and pre-opening support.

A lot of hospitality businesses don't need another agency telling them what to do from the outside. They need people who understand what it's actually like to run a venue, because we've done it ourselves.

That's the difference: operational experience being applied directly, not theory being handed over in a report.

Q: You mentioned five service lines. What are the other three?

SAVVY Education, SAVVY Events and SAVVY Investment. SAVVY Education develops hospitality talent at every career stage through industry-led programmes, our Bee Our Guest initiative and The Art of Hospitality conference series.

SAVVY Investment provides agile capital solutions, from cash flow support and bridge funding to refinancing guidance and asset protection; our recent investments include Chance Clean Cider, an award-winning low-alcohol brand.

SAVVY Events oversees hospitality-led experiences built for commercial impact and community connection, including DevaFest, a family music festival at Cholmondeley Castle that attracts 30,000 visitors each August, and the Cheshire and North Wales Food & Drink Festival.

Q: What does SAVVY's portfolio look like in practice?

It already demonstrates the model in action.

We work with venues including The Chester Townhouse, The Annex, The Old Registry, Hotel Wrexham, The Savvy Fox and Queens Square Social, alongside events such as Deva Fest and the Cheshire and North Wales Food and Drink Festival.

Q: What are the biggest challenges you're seeing operators face right now?

It's the combination of pressures landing together rather than any one of them in isolation.

Wage increases, energy bills, food inflation, business rates and National Insurance aren't new problems individually, but when they all hit at once, that's when businesses that would otherwise survive start to struggle.

Q: What's next for SAVVY Collective?

Our aim is simple, but bold: to support hospitality businesses in building strong teams, service excellence, operational resilience and sustainable profitability.

That means growing all five service lines and continuing to work with operators who want a genuinely hands-on partner rather than an advisory-only relationship.

Q: Finally, what would you say to owners considering working with SAVVY Collective?

Come and talk to us. Whether you need full operating platform support, focused consultancy, help developing your team, investment support or a partner for an event, we've built the business around actually understanding what it takes to run hospitality venues day to day, because that's exactly what we've done ourselves.

Steven will be at IHS London, 5-6 October. Meet SAVVY Collective on Stand 1812 and find out more at savvycollective.co.uk.