Just in case the sight of 50-year-olds in bucket hats calling each other ‘our kid’ hadn’t alerted you, the 90s are back. For those of us who were present for the first rotation, the news that a pair of eight-hole DMs is now £170 is something that even inflation can’t explain, although painting the Anti-Nazi League logo on the side in nail varnish is as depressingly relevant as ever.
Fun though it was, most of us were happy to move on from music cassettes to the obsessive repeat options offered by CDs, although the swooning from The Youth when you reveal that, yes, you sometimes used to chat to members of Menswear at the cigarette machine in The Good Mixer is amusing. You weren’t cool then, but somehow you’re cool now.
The upside-down retro fun continued this week when the usually-correct Mark Kleinman at Sky News broke the news that Terra Firma Capital Partners was one of the many bidders for the stricken Hotel du Vin and Malmaison chains.
Now, before we get into it, you may find the use of the word ‘chain’ to be triggering here, and, while we don’t want to contribute to your trauma journey, particularly so soon after the summer break, it’s getting used, so add it to the list for your therapist.
Over the intervening years, when the Gallagher brothers were busy falling in and out of love with actresses, pop stars and each other, Hotel du Vin and Malmaison were evolving into the original boutique hotel cautionary tale. ‘You can’t scale boutique hotels’ we would say to each other at conferences, nodding sagely and adding ‘just look at Hotel du Vin and Malmaison’. For extra colour and wisdom you would add in ‘just imagine what would have happened if Marriott had bought them’, as indeed was almost the case.
At that point, sure, Marriott might not have been able to handle the world of boutique hotels (at that stage Farrow & Ball had yet to be acquired by private equity and might not have been able to meet the demand for Down Pipe or Hague Blue). But now? Having become a brand stable of all colours one can imagine them being tucked in like a CitizenM and yes, that deal freaked out a lot of people on LinkedIn, but let’s just see how it progresses.
Over the years Hotel du Vin and Malmaison have appeared at other illustrative points in the evolution of the sector, including the launch of Vector Hospitality, the UK-based hotel REIT that never was and at this point around 7% of you are having palpitations of recognition. The rest of you – ask your parents. But get them a brandy first.
But now back to the future and Terra Firma, which is no longer run by Guy Hands (or ‘Ghee Hands’ as some Americans of our acquaint called him back when Le Méridien was A Thing – if you’ve finished the brandy, fetch a second to wash down thoughts of Juergen Bartels) but his son. However, Ghee is the better known which is why he’s in all the headlines, which technically makes him clickbait. Time for that third brandy.
The group is reported to have joined the likes of Fortress Investment as Frasers looks to exit and commence what is expected to be a lengthy period of wound-licking. Whoever wins will be tasked first with reviving the fortunes of the chains, before the pesky scaling issue becomes an issue.
The world has changed since the 1990s and Hotel du Vin and Malmaison have been superseded by the likes of The Hoxton. Does that mean there isn’t room in the world for 37 hotels with good service and great wine? Of course not. What it does mean is that this will be the last stop off for the pair in the land of financiers, with the next exit likely to be to former suitor Marriott (or, like, Accor, but when those two merge they’ll all be under the same wing, innit). Whichever Hands gets their hands on them will have that in mind.
