ONE of Britain’s best-known boutique hotel groups considered taking on Château La Chaire – but concluded that Jersey’s short tourism season made the landmark Rozel hotel commercially unviable, it has emerged.
The Pig, which has built a successful business around reviving country house hotels and turning them into its distinctive “restaurants with rooms”, was approached as Château La Chaire’s owners explored ways of securing its future as a hotel.
Founded in 2011 by veteran hotelier Robin Hutson, the Pig hotels group began with the transformation of a loss-making hotel in Brockenhurst and had expanded to nine locations by late 2024. Mr Hutson previously co-founded Hotel du Vin, which was sold for £66 million in 2004.
But, despite recognising the “quality and character” of the Grade 2 listed property, The Pig decided against investing in the Jersey hotel, citing the length of Jersey’s tourism season as its principal concern.
The decision is being cited by Château La Chaire’s owners as independent evidence of the increasingly difficult economics of running the 13-bedroom hotel, which they say has gone from a profitable business to a loss-making one after 25 years of largely static income and rising costs.
Documents submitted as part of plans to turn the landmark Rozel hotel into a private residence lay bare the financial pressures facing the business – including a shorter tourist season, falling occupancy, recruitment difficulties and the higher costs of operating in Jersey.
The owners say annual occupancy has fallen from the “mid 80%” range to, at its worst, the “mid 50%”, while the hotel’s income has remained almost unchanged for a quarter of a century.
“Due to the Chateau’s size – only having 13 bedrooms, it cannot make enough income throughout the summer trading season to make this viable,” they said.
“The Chateau income has remained almost static for the past 25 years and with ever-increasing costs, what was a profitable and successful business is now loss-making.”
The property, which was put on the market earlier this year for £4.5 million as either a hotel or private residence, has been owned and operated by its current owners since 1986.
After purchasing what was then a 26-bedroom hotel, they carried out a major refurbishment and transformed it into a 14-bedroom luxury country house hotel.
It subsequently achieved AA Three Red Star status and two AA Rosettes for its restaurant before being upgraded to four-star status.
But the owners say conditions have changed significantly since the hotel traded successfully during the 1990s.
As well as a shortening tourism season, they cite reduced air connectivity and higher travel costs, the hotel’s inability to benefit significantly from the corporate market because of its rural location and increased competition from hotels with superior facilities.
Higher taxi costs and stricter drink-driving regulations are also said to have affected food and drink income.
The application said that Château La Chaire’s owners considered the feedback from the Pig group regarding Jersey’s tourism landscape and the challenges of operating locally as “particularly significant as it comes from an experienced specialist operator whose business model is centred on precisely the type of high-quality country house hotel that Château La Chaire represents”.
“Their conclusion reinforces the owners’ own experience that the difficulties faced by the hotel are structural rather than management-related.”
The planning documents also cite higher staffing and recruitment costs, Island transport and delivery expenses and generally higher overheads than comparable mainland locations.
The owners said that the proposed conversion follows almost 40 years of “continuous stewardship, refurbishment and reinvestment”, but that changing visitor behaviour and the limitations of running a small luxury country house hotel have made continued operation “economically unviable”.
If approved, the three-storey property would become a 13-bedroom private home with 13 bathrooms and more than 1,000sqm of internal floor space.
No extensions or external alterations are proposed, and there would be no changes to the listed gardens.
The application argues that converting the Château to residential use would provide a sustainable future for the historic building and encourage continued investment in its upkeep.
