As featured in Boutique Hotelier
It’s looking like 2025 will be another year of growth for BWH Hotels GB as it continues to partner with unique and independent hotels across the UK.
The group recently announced a string of partnership wins with boutique hotels – and the ambitious growth plans mean its stellar services will be offered to many more hoteliers in the coming year.
BWH Hotels, which represents Great Britain’s largest group of independent hotels, including Best Western and WorldHotels, launched a five-year strategy in 2024 with the target of adding 8,000 rooms to their portfolio. This equates to approximately 100 new hotels and will mean that the group’s nationwide room count will hit 20,000.
Among many recent successes for BWH Hotels is its new partnership with two luxury hotels in Manchester. This forms part of the hospitality brand’s expansion of its footprint across the Northern Powerhouse cities with a sharp focus on quality.
The new Manchester luxury partners are: Velvet Hotel, Bar and Brasserie and Forty-Seven Hotel with Asha’s restaurant and The Peterman cocktail bar. Both of these hotels now sit under the WorldHotels Crafted brand.
As one of Manchester’s first boutique hotels, Velvet Hotel is a city icon, offering 36 uniquely designed rooms featuring chandeliers, murals and a complimentary glass of Kylie Minogue prosecco for guests on arrival.
Located just three-minutes from Manchester main station, Piccadilly, Velvet is also perfectly located for the corporate market.
Seeking to drive more direct bookings while maintaining its independence, Velvet Hotel partnered with BWH Hotels, under its luxury WorldHotels Crafted brand for its flexible partnership options with results that rivals major brands.
Equally iconic, Forty-Seven’s natural playfulness matches that of the city; with signature hot-touches that mirror the vibrancy of Peter Street. This is teamed with a design that is boldly and sensitively injected alongside the original features of the Grade-II listed property so that a luxe hotel experience is created with mood lighting and L’Occitane toiletries.
A part of the WorldHotels Crafted brand, it also features Asha’s, a Michelin Guide-recognised North-West Indian restaurant and The Peterman cocktail bar. Inspired by Manchester’s safe-cracking history, the cocktail bar offers immersive safes and “robber” cocktails, delivering an unforgettable experience for guests.
With private dining for up to 24 and a sophisticated boardroom for meetings, Forty-Seven selected BWH Hotels WorldHotels Crafted brand for its global reach, all while preserving its independence and unique sense of character.
Ryan Thompson, general manager at KRO Hospitality, commented: “With two stunning boutique hotels in prime city locations, I am proud to be joining WorldHotels Crafted this year. This partnership gives us increased visibility and the brand contribution of an internationally recognised name, all while maintaining the flexibility we need.
“It allows us to celebrate our hotel’s independence and location as well as our dedication to a quality, immersive experience – which we are able to achieve through meaningful service and creating authentic connections with each and every one of our hotel guests.”
WorldHotels Crafted allows innovative, creative and boutique hotels to benefit from the support of a global hotel brand while still maintaining that all-important emotional connection with guests.
Tim Rumney, BWH Hotels (GB) CEO, said: “These two new additions perfectly represent the WorldHotels luxury brand and show boutique hoteliers how much they can gain from partnering with us without needing to sacrifice anything that makes them unique. Our growth in the past year has been impressive – targeting northern powerhouse cities like Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle is a key part of the strategy.
“We remain focused on expanding across the country and building on the impressive success of 2024 but this will only be achieved with a continued focus on quality. The recent WorldHotels brand partners are great examples of the quality we are looking for and the success we have had last year proves that empowering our hoteliers while still safeguarding their independence – something we call ‘The Power of Two’ – works.”
This balance has proven particularly appealing to boutique hotel operators like KRO Hospitality – owners of the two Manchester properties.
Kim Eivind Krohn, managing director At KRO Hospitality said: “Partnering with BWH Hotels marks another step in our ambitious growth strategy. We are proud of the individual style of our boutique hotels and we would not have given that up.
“We’re happy to keep our independence whilst taking advantage of WorldHotels’ range of benefits such as a global loyalty scheme and marketing programmes.”
The partnership model offers hotels the ability to maintain their unique identity and operational independence while benefiting from BWH Hotels’ global distribution network, loyalty program and marketing capabilities.
Another advantage of working with BWH Hotels rather than other groups is the nature of the partnership. Independent, boutique hotels will remain just that.
The assistance from BWH Hotels is more flexible than rivals and will help with direct bookings, global reach and – ultimately – profitability. What the partnership won’t do is impinge on a hotelier’s creativity, style and uniqueness.
This approach has proven particularly successful in attracting distinctive hotels that wish to maintain their character while accessing the advantages that come with a global hospitality brand.
Worldwide, BWH Hotels operates out of more than 100 countries with 4,200 hotels and 60 million rewards members which means that partner hotels have the exciting potential to significantly increase their number of overseas guests.
