After developing and managing hotels in the United Kingdom for more than 20 years, Shiva Hotels and Managing Director and Founder Rishi Sachdev are focused on a new brand called Place III Hotels.

Place III Hotels has three hotels in its luxury portfolio. The first was the 199-room The BoTree in London, which just opened in September.

“Place III is a whole different vision, our evolution,” Sachdev said. “How we changed as people, how the market has changed and how guests should be looked after. Added to that is what guests now are looking for, which is an experience.

“Brands are by definition homogenous. We did not want that,” he added.

The brand's name Place III comes from a phrase Sachdev heard from a Salesforce executive. The context involved what Salesforce regarded as the three pillars of today’s socially responsible and sustainable business operations: people, place and planet.

“I loved that. At the time, I had 18 months of marketing input from a consultant on the hotel vision we were developing, and I did not like any of what was brought to me as much as I did III,” Sachdev said. “We happily give credit where credit is due and then do our own thing with it in the hospitality space. After all, that philosophy is something we care deeply about.”

Sachdev was not brought up in the hotel industry. Initially, he traded derivatives at Lehman Brothers, which he left five years before the company famously collapsed. At the time, he already had founded Shiva Hotels.

For decades, Sachdev's parents operated nursing homes, overseeing one of the largest companies in this space in the U.K.

“There were 60 or so homes in an industry where you are guilty until proven innocent,” Sachdev said. “Your clients are essentially frail and elderly. Hats off, though. My parents did a great job.

“We come from a humble background, a two-bedroom house and a lot of siblings,” he said.

Sachdev, who is a qualified accountant and graduated from the University of Cambridge, worked as an options trader around the world before he started working for the family’s property interests.

He also worked in its nursing-home business, “but I did not see where I could add value,” he said.

That is when Shiva Hotels became his focus, with the company securing the U.K. franchise for the Howard Johnson and Days Inn brands.

“It was a good business model, midmarket hotels in urban centers, essentially, where Travelodge and Premier Inn have gone, and it was growing fast. I decided to take it over as a sole concern and left banking,” he said.

Sachdev said it is this past that he looks back on when his teams develop hotels.

“I live with my family together with my father, and I want my children to be proud of what we do, to be an example, to make a difference,” he said.

That difference has transformed from development and management of hotels for other brands to those Place III is creating for the new traveler and their requirements.

He said each of Place III’s hotels will have a rooftop space and a focus of combining social elements with social wellness.

Shiva has managed a 2,000-room-plus franchised portfolio for brands such as Best Western International, Hilton, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International, Ramada and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.

One project was London’s first Hampton by Hilton hotel, an almost 300-room property in Waterloo that Shiva has since sold.

Currently, the only property apart from the three Place III hotels on Shiva's books is the 129-room Lincoln Plaza London, Curio Collection by Hilton.

So far, the only hotel in the Place III Hotels brand that has opened is The BoTree.

The hotel is located in the former Welbeck Street car park in the Marylebone district of London, a well-known architectural landmark that was built to serve the adjacent Debenhams department store.

Government advisory organization Historic England looked at the car park with an idea of listing it as an architecturally important building and thus protect it, but it decided against it. The Debenhams department store across Welbeck Street also is being redeveloped, which will provide an active space right outside the door of The BoTree.

Getting to this stage was tempered by high property prices, a lack of distress and unfavorable economic conditions, Sachdev said.

“Shiva’s first owned and managed property was the Ramada Hotel & Suites London Docklands, close to convention center ExCeL London and now the DoubleTree by Hilton,” he said. “That hotel gave us five years of learning about staffing levels, contracts and new development opportunities. We went out wanting to buy more opportunities in city-center locations, where [revenue per available room] is the greatest, places such as London, Edinburgh, Cambridge, York and Bath, all-year-round markets.”

Sachdev added hotel pricing in London nearly 20 years ago was consistently high.

“Prices in London in 2005, 2006 and 2007 were high, so we went to York, Manchester, Gatwick Airport. After the financial crisis, we still could not find distressed assets in London, even if growth there will offset extra costs,” he said.

Fortune changed when there was a crash in the office sector in 2015 and 2016, Sachdev said.

Shiva could then look at acquiring a site every year and had enough experience to be able to negotiate planning committees and change-of-use criteria.

“We had to underpin the hotel at planning committees by saying we know the hotel has to stand for something: conscious luxury,” he said.

Sachdev added he and his team had taken note of how hotels and guests were changing.

The other two Place III hotels currently being developed are the 194-room Brickmakers Yard site — a little further east in Central London's Soho area — and the 143-room CTQ site in Holborn Viaduct, adjacent to both the City of London and the West End.

The Soho site comprises four different property titles and approximately 145,000 square feet of space, he said.

“It had a previous developer, but no hotel earmarked for it. Then, another developer bought it and sold one part to us. Then the residential market changed, and we saw the opportunity of putting it all back together,” he said.

“The Holborn site measures 78,000 square feet, but it has only 48,000 net. It is to be knocked down, and we saw the opportunity to plan for 120,000, and we’re also renovating the church next door, which would have been unable to otherwise stay open,” he added.

Sachdev said he feels strongly about helping his hotels’ communities.

“I was shocked to see that there is 25% child poverty in Westminster, so we started and my wife runs food and supplemental education schemes. We also have hotel apprenticeships,” he said.

The BoTree has a definite design aesthetic, Sachdev said. Food and beverage also is very important.

“Even the lowest rooms category has a suite feel, and where rooms are [located] was a focus on the design. How can any hotel allow someone to walk along the corridor, however innocently, and accidentally wake you up?” he said.

“The guestroom door is the weakest point, and that is where we concentrate. This will be in all hotels, but our social spaces across our hotels will not feel the same,” he added.

The BoTree is intended to evoke Marylebone’s village life, a district of London known for its upmarket shops and restaurants. The district is also the home of world-famous bookstore Daunt Books and the cricket club where the rules of the game were codified. Marylebone is also home to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and where The Beatles’ had the band's Apple Corp office building.

The hotel’s principal food-and-beverage outlet is Lavo, an Italian restaurant joint venture with Tao Group Hospitality.

Sachdev also is considering a membership component for Place III.

“I welcome all the competition. It helps drive [average daily rate] and the quality of guests. In London, we are seeing that guest set move from traditional hotels to boutique hotels. I’d get nervous if I realized I was just building another hotel like all the others,” Sachdev said.

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