Cycas CEO Matt Luscombe reflects on the year

While 2021 has been challenging for our industry in many ways, it’s certainly not been a quiet period for Cycas Hospitality.

Over the last 15 months, we have opened or taken over 17 hotels, taking our portfolio to 33 properties in prime locations across six European countries, including our first signing in Switzerland. According to our auditors, Cycas Hospitality no longer qualifies as an ‘SME’, which made me smile.

The reason (and motivation) for this growth is the ambition of the incredible team we have assembled. In two and a half years, we have completely rebuilt our operations, commercial and finance teams, bringing on-board some of the very best hoteliers and functional leaders in our industry. On and off property, we have recruited well over 500 amazing, new ‘Cycadettes’, during perhaps the best time to attract talent in decades. We also put in place a suite of industry-leading financial, accounting and commercial tools and technology platforms in service of our hotels and investment partners.

These transformative changes and counter-cyclical investments have driven strong results under difficult circumstances, with portfolio RGI of c.140% in 2021, and a flow-through to GOP that averaged 10 points above our HotStats competitive sets. We are committed to continue delivering the strongest possible commercial returns for our hotel investment partners as our industry recovers.

Furthermore, we remain fully committed to service excellence in every one of our hotels. Cycas Hospitality continues to rank as the #1 independent management company among IHG’s European franchisees, according to their HeartBeat measure, and our hotels consistently rank in the top 5% in their markets according to guest reviews on TripAdvisor and Booking.com.

More importantly still, we were proud to become the only hotel management company to achieve a fourth, consecutive top 30 placing in The Caterer’s Best Places to Work in Hospitality, as well as the UK’s leading hotel management company for Employee Engagement in Caterer.com’s People Awards 2021. Our internal engagement survey reported engagement (‘Net Promoter Score’) of over 90% among our Cycadettes, which is my biggest source of pride.

As we look forward to what we hope will be a year of recovery for our industry, I am excited about opportunities to grow the Cycas business across Europe with existing and new investment partners. Our announcement, this week, of a new, strategic partnership with Borealis Hotel Group is another important sign of things to come.

Please get in touch with our development team to find out how working with Cycas could help your business thrive in 2022. Or visit our careers page to find out about new opportunities to grow with Cycas.