My background

I grew up in Bristol, studied hospitality management, and spent my early career at Malmaison Hotels in Edinburgh and Oxford — a lifestyle chain that gave me a solid grounding in hotel operations without the rigidity of the big international brands.

In 2012 I took the General Manager role at The Lamplighter Inn, a 28-room family-run hotel in Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. It was my first time running an independent property end-to-end: revenue strategy, staff, OTA relationships, technology decisions, the lot. I made plenty of mistakes. I also learned more in those five years than in any other period of my career.

In 2017 I moved to Lisbon to join Meridian Hospitality Group, a small independent hotel company with properties across Portugal, Spain, and Italy. My role was to standardise operations across six properties — bringing consistent SOPs, reporting, and technology to a group that had grown faster than its systems. Over six years, I evaluated or deployed PMS, channel managers, revenue management systems, booking engines, upsell tools, and guest communication platforms across the portfolio.

In 2023 I launched Espace. I moved my family to Lisbon permanently, which turned out to be the right base for covering the European independent hotel market.

Career

How I write

Every recommendation on Espace comes from one of three places:

Direct deployment experience. If I've implemented a system across a live hotel property, I say so and explain what I found.

Structured evaluation. For systems I haven't deployed personally, I run a structured assessment: demo, trial, pricing review, and cross-referencing against verified user reviews on Hotel Tech Report, Capterra, and G2. I document my methodology for each review.

Industry research. Market context, statistics, and trend analysis drawn from verified sources — Eurostat, Hotel Tech Report, Cloudbeds research, Statista — always cited.

What I don't do: republish vendor marketing materials as independent analysis, take money to change a recommendation, or pretend I haven't used something when I have.

On affiliate commissions

Some links on Espace earn a referral commission when you sign up to a product through them. This is how Espace funds itself. I disclose every affiliate relationship clearly, at the top of every article that contains one.

The commercial relationship does not change the assessment. RoomRaccoon earns an affiliate commission and gets a strong review — because it deserves one for the right properties. Cloudbeds also earns a commission and gets a more qualified review — because the support issues are real and European hoteliers should know about them before signing.

If I wouldn't recommend a product to a hotelier friend over coffee, it doesn't get a recommendation here regardless of whether there's an affiliate programme.

Areas I cover

• Hotel property management systems (PMS)
• Channel managers and OTA strategy
• Revenue management and dynamic pricing
• Direct booking strategy and booking engines
• AI tools for hotel operations and revenue
• Hotel operations and SOPs
• Templates, checklists, and operational documents for independent hotels

Get in touch

If you have a question about a hotel technology product, want to suggest a review, or have spotted something that needs correcting on Espace, I'd genuinely like to hear from you.

The best way to reach me is via the contact page. I read everything and try to respond within a few days.

If you're a vendor and want to discuss Espace's affiliate programme, please use the same contact page and mark your message as such.