We build hotels that hold their numbers.

With a feasibility study. In four to six weeks you have the answer: how many keys, which segment, what rate and occupancy the market supports, what it costs to build and how long until the capital comes back. Take that to an architect — not the other way round. A design commissioned before the numbers is the single most common way to lose six figures on a hotel project.

Advisory and development work is a fixed fee, or a fee per stage. Operations are a base fee calculated on gross revenue plus an incentive fee on gross operating profit — so part of what we earn depends on how the hotel actually performs, not on how long we stay. Every fee is set out in writing before any work begins, and there are no success fees hidden in procurement.

No, and we could not: every project requires a licensed architect of record and a general contractor, and those stay with your local firms. We sit on the owner's side of the table. We write the operating brief the design has to satisfy, review each drawing set against how the hotel will actually run, tender and verify quantities, and hold the budget and the schedule. Whoever builds the project cannot audit it.

Sometimes — and the address has far less to do with it than the building does. Floor plate depth decides whether you get sellable rooms or a corridor of interior boxes. Window module decides the key width. Riser capacity, slab-to-slab height and exiting decide whether the conversion is affordable at all. A conversion test answers that in three to four weeks, before you spend anything on design.

Two and a half to four years for a new build in a major market. The difference from most other countries is approvals: rezoning and site plan approval frequently take longer than construction itself, and they vary by municipality more than any other factor. A conversion of an existing building runs twelve to twenty months and is the reason so much new supply now comes from conversions rather than ground-up.

Both work. The answer is a number, not a preference. A flag buys distribution, a loyalty base and a lender who recognises the name — and costs roughly eight to twelve per cent of rooms revenue once royalty, marketing, loyalty and reservation fees are added, before the brand standards land in your construction budget. Independent keeps that margin and every decision, but only pays if the hotel gives a guest a reason to choose it: a defined concept, a written operating standard and someone accountable for holding it. We model both cases on your actual numbers before design starts, because the brand decision sets the specification — and once drawings exist it is expensive to reverse.