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Changing of the guard at revitalized One Aldwych

“My goal is to keep alive what has been established by Simon Hirst,” says Janine Marshall, general manager of One Aldwych Hotel, London. Her boss, Hirst, legendary managing director of the 105-key hotel at its opening 21 years ago, leaves this coming Tuesday, July 16.

“I do not see myself as a legend,” said Hirst, who, not being a particularly academic type, had looked for an industry that would utilize his professional mindset coupled with practical and vocational aspirations. After a Mandarin Oriental training program he worked his way up Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts. As GM of Four Seasons Resort Chiang Mai, Thailand, he was headhunted by the late Jacques Schneider at Profile, in London, to head what would be Gordon Campbell Gray’s first hotel, named for its address, One Aldwych.

“Gordon thought outside the box and established a hotel that combined tradition, exemplified by a building that opened in 1907 as the headquarters of The Morning Post newspaper, with a contemporary touch,” Hirst recalled. He started a year before the hotel’s 1998 opening, and from day one he began forming partnerships with companies in Covent Garden, five minutes’ walk away.

Guests, of whom the U.S. has provided a steady 42% over the years, quickly appreciated the hotel’s proximity, too, to theaterland and the River Thames. About half of all guests are repeats, and new business has been attracted via The Leading Hotels of the World.

Simon Hirst and Janine Marshall at One Aldwych Hotel, London
Simon Hirst and Janine Marshall at One Aldwych Hotel, London

As if to check whether the grass is really greener on the other side, in 2012 Hirst took a breather, with Raffles, first in the Seychelles and then Singapore. In July 2017 he was enticed back to London, to bring One Aldwych up to date. “I said at that time I was only coming back for two years. We have been through a complete new look, retaining our 350-plus original artworks but bringing in four colorways of lighter palettes in bedrooms, which now have English oak floors with throw rugs. We closed for five months, keeping everyone on – concierges spent their time further honing their intimate knowledge of London,” Hirst explained.

He now describes One Aldwych as an independent, modern and sophisticated hotel. It has two restaurants, one Basque, the other international but dairy-free, and a renewed partnership with The Roald Dahl Story Company Ltd means more years of the highly popular – dairy-heavy – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-themed afternoon teas, favorites with kids and their parents.

A revitalized fitness center and Olympic-length indoor pool similarly help set One Aldwych up, say both Hirst and Janine Marshall, for the next 20 years. An essential part of the two-decade recipe was to have management led by an acute financial brain (“experience in finance makes business sense in today’s fast-moving world, but we also wanted someone positive,” Hirst said).

South Africa-born Marshall has risen through finance. In 2007 she moved across London from Jumeirah Carlton Tower to be One Aldwych’s director of finance: She added EAM in September 2013, and in March, following the Hirst succession plan, she was appointed GM.

“Yes, I come from finance but I have always stressed maintaining balance between expense and product standard. I know how to keep that balance,” Janine Marshall declared.

Hirst bows out Tuesday evening – he will go round and thank his 215-strong team. Starting Wednesday, he will take at least two months off, to catch his breath, and then he will, to use his own words, “look around.”

At 9.30 a.m. on Wednesday morning Marshalll will, as she has done since June 3, hold the “morning meeting.” “I will always want to do what is best for the asset,” said this financial hotelier.

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