Julia Hands is none of the above. Softly-spoken and attired in a simple black business suit, she has a disarming smile coupled with a lawyer’s skill of not saying anything that does not need to be said.
As owner, chairman and chief executive of Hand Picked Hotels, her latest acquisition is the Grand Jersey on the Esplanade. Apart from a flurry of pink shirts at reception and Hand Picked-branded drinks coasters, there is little evidence yet of a change of ownership. That will come later in the year, says operations director Douglas Waddell, who is sitting in on the interview.
In addition to the Grand, the company also owns the St Pierre Park in Guernsey – acquired from Sandpiper CI nearly two years ago for the proverbial ‘undisclosed sum’ – and the Hotel L’Horizon in St Brelade’s Bay, which came with a package of 18 hotels which formed the basis of Hand Picked back in 1999.
‘The hotels were intended as a passive investment, but the management contract was not working – as the management company grew, the hotels were getting lost in the mix,’ she explained. ‘I thought it needed individual attention, so in 2001 I terminated the contract and somehow ended up as chief executive.’
If you are wondering where the money came from to buy the hotels in the first place, it may help to know that Mrs Hands is married to multi-millionaire financier Guy Hands, the founder of Terra Firm Capital Partners and a self-confessed tax exile who for many years has resided in Guernsey.
Julia, however, continues to live in Sevenoaks, Kent, where she grew up, and it was here that she set up the office for her Hand Picked venture. ‘We found an old library, built in 1903 and funded by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, which makes a superb office.
‘It was a very steep learning curve, because then I had to find a head office team. It sounds strange, but I had never needed to interview anyone for a job before. That was an interesting process and quite a few of the people I took on are still with us.’
At that time, she recalls, her daughter (the youngest of four children) was just three years old. ‘I had good family support, two sets of family on the doorstep.’ Nevertheless, it was quite a change of career for the solicitor who read law and classics at Cambridge and then worked for 12 years at Linklaters & Paines in the City.
‘I’d dealt with renovation and building work before, but I was fascinated by marketing and distribution. There was a completely new world of acronyms – like OTAs and GDS – that was most puzzling. I kept my mouth shut for a long time and just listened and learned, to see how things seemed to work,’ she said.
‘When we took over, the hotels had been badly invested in and they were in poor condition, no brand and low morale – it was a blank canvas. We started from scratch, drew up a mission statement and held roadshows for the staff and guests to ask them what they would expect. From that, we put together the company values and brand standards.’
It was all the more difficult because the hotels had belonged to two different groups – Arcadian and Virgin – with two distinct operating systems. Two were sold shortly after the acquisition. ‘Luckily we found buyers easily, but it can be quite destabilising.’
Over the years the mix of hotels has changed a little – some have been sold, others acquired – but 15 years on it has become the ‘collection, rather than a chain’ that Mrs Hands always hoped it would be. In the UK the portfolio is made up of listed former country houses, stretching from just outside Edinburgh down to the south-west, that reflect comfort and informality. ‘It’s nice if you feel you can just curl up on the sofa.’
Currently the group employs around 1,300 staff (of which up to 400 work in the two Channel Islands), plus 46 at head office, with additional recruitment during the summer months. ‘We’re always very consultative about what staff think, so that they feel part of the process,’ said Mrs Hands. ‘We’ve just come from the annual L’Horizon roadshow – we visit each hotel in turn and present our plan, and they give us their plans for the current financial year. Then we walk around and see what needs doing and have lunch or tea with the staff.
‘People seem to really enjoy it, although they do ask some funny questions. Someone who has been working in the kitchen for five years came up to me and said how much he loved working for Hand Picked, and that he’d been wanting to tell me for ages. It sounds cheesy, but our staff are our greatest asset.’
In 2007 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the hospitality industry and she is also a patron of the Springboard Charity, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. ‘The purpose is to bring people into the hospitality industry, not just young people but adults, too, who may have had a rocky start in their career and life in general.’
One way of combining work and pleasure is an interest in wine. ‘I took a Diploma in Wines in 1997 with the Wine and Spirit Education Trust and for quite a few years I helped with the judging at the Wine and Spirit Association, which I really enjoyed.’
The family also owns a wine estate in Tuscany, Villa Saletta, which supplies several wines for the Hand Picked wine list. ‘I don’t have any direct involvement, but we do the tastings and work out the blends – we grow several different varieties.’
These days there is little time for hobbies – although she does like to ski, keeps a number of books downloaded onto her iPad and has on occasion played a round of golf at the St Pierre Park. A preferred holiday destination is the Costa del Sol – ‘I think Spain is undervalued’ – although around 20 weekends a year are spent in Guernsey which, she says diplomatically, is not better or worse than Jersey, but ‘just different’.
The three Channel Island hotels are a portfolio in themselves and complement each other, she says. ‘The Grand is a great sister hotel to the l’Horizon and like the St Pierre Park in Guernsey is a hybrid – partly leisure, partly business. And each hotel has more than 100 rooms, so they make a good group.
‘We bought the Grand knowing what we had to do – new boilers, new windows, but it is in pretty good condition, it has good internal atmosphere and the staff are energetic and professional. So we have no radical plans at the moment.’
That said, the Grand has changed hands a number of times over recent years, passing from De Vere to Hilwood Resorts and most recently RBS Real Estate Management. So might it not be something of a risk to take on such a large hotel at a time when tourism is showing wan signs of revitalisation but is not exactly booming?
‘From a tourism point of view, Jersey is a destination that is a little bit different – you do feel as if you have got away. And there is a thriving local community on both islands, local markets – hotels don’t have to service only the visitors, they can service the local community as well.’
In terms of location, Mr Waddell observes that there are some ‘cracking views’. But what about the massive office block going up next door which looks as if it will dwarf the hotel by several storeys?
‘From the company’s perspective, the fact that they are beefing up the finance sector can only be good for us, and for the people of the Island,’ Mr Waddell said. ‘We find the idea of having a thousand people working next door to us very exciting.’
‘I don’t think people appreciate how easy it is to get here,’ added Mrs Hands. ‘It really is very simple, just up and down, not a couple of hours or more. It’s a good place for conferences, the facilities are good and it is somewhere very different.
‘And they really are very beautiful islands.’
