This year’s finalists are:
Chestnut
The group founded by ex-City banker Philip Turner operates 15 pubs with rooms and four larger hotel-style sites across East Anglia.
Pub rooms have a cosy but minimalist feel, with appeal to a broad range of guests, while the trading areas are a contemporary take on a traditional village pub, serving high quality food to staying guests but also offering space for locals to enjoy a drink.
The business has been investing heavily in its room stock, including stand-alone barn-style developments that have a firm eye on sustainability, both in the choice of materials and furniture incorporated into the design and the availability of electric car charging points.
Chestnut has sought to drive repeat stays and extra spend in pubs by accommodation through a new loyalty app, and an impressive print magazine called In a Nutshell gives guests tips for interesting things to do during their stay at one of the pubs.
A tie-up with an East Anglian brewer ensures there’s always a local beer on the bar, and Chestnut’s acquisition of Norfolk wine merchant Peter Graham Wines in 2023 ensures the group’s pubs have wine lists that come second to none in its region.
The Coaching Inn Group
The Coaching Inn Group’s Ronseal-style name says it all. It takes often unloved former coaching inns in market towns across England and invests heavily to add an extra glossy layer or two, turning them into high quality hotels-cum-pub, providing high quality stays that needn’t break the bank.
Great food, a warm welcome and a drinks offering that pitches at the top end of the mainstream, mean that sites have a genuine pub atmosphere.
The space that some of them afford has enabled the business to explore a new revenue stream as the destination coffee shop on the high street.
A rapid expansion programme has slowed in the past 12-18 months, allowing the group to refocus on its core estate, improving the guest experience by fine-tuning those all-important details.
A new service skills training programme for front-of-house teams, in a business where the bar for standards was already set high, shows the level of its ambitions.
The presence of Adam Charity as chief operating officer ensures continuity of the vision his father Kevin first had for the company that the family sold to RedCat in 2021.
Hall & Woodhouse
Hall & Woodhouse operates 10 managed pubs with accommodation across southern England, with a mix of coastal and market town locations.
Both the pubs and the guest rooms within them are designed to reflect the individual personalities of their respective locations. Every room is different but there’s a raft of non-negotiables, such as premium-quality mattresses, to ensure guests can be assured of consistently high standard wherever they choose to stay
Like its estate as a whole, Hall & Woodhouse has shone a light on sustainability in its room operation, favouring complementary canned water over plastic bottles, eschewing pod coffee machines to rein in waste, and declining the option to put the TV or radio on to greet guests on arrival.
The company has invested in a new reservations system to ensure that guests are offered the right room for the right price at the right time, tipping the balance away from online travel agents towards more profitable direct bookings.
Heartwood Inns
Heartwood made a major step into the accommodation market in 2024, with the acquisition of five pubs with rooms. It has moved at remarkable place and each acquisition has been gutted to be re-born in the Heartwood style, creating attractive, modern food-led pubs with guest rooms that offer premium stays at a range of price points.
Major investment has gone into the detail of room design, reflected in high-quality fabrics, top-of-the-range room facilities and a luxurious feel, regardless of room type.
Trading areas within the pubs are also of a high standard, with contemporary cues underpinned by traditional and historical elements that help preserve an authentic pub character.
Heartwood has executed soft openings at all its new accommodation sites, offering hand-picked guests a free stay, helping to spread the word, highlight snags and refine the offer before the first paying guests check in.
The company has chosen to promote from within and upskill its own teams on the specifics of accommodation to ensure its pubs with rooms reflect the culture of the business as a whole.
