Background
Edyn Group, a prominent operator in the hospitality sector, wanted to strengthen its property maintenance and asset management practices so that guests experienced the same standard across an expanding portfolio. With properties spread across Europe, Edyn needed a senior leader to oversee maintenance operations and uphold safety standards while building a culture in which maintenance teams worked together and kept improving how things were done.
Edyn asked Maxwell Stephens to recruit a Group Property Maintenance and Asset Manager to take on that remit.
The Challenge
Edyn faced several challenges in improving its property maintenance processes:
- Consistency. Ensuring consistent service standards across a diverse range of properties.
- Regulation. Navigating complex regulatory requirements and safety protocols.
- Geography. Coordinating maintenance efforts across multiple locations, including new properties in the pre-opening phase.
- Culture. Cultivating a collaborative and empowered team culture to drive efficiency and improvement.
Group-level maintenance roles in hospitality are demanding for reasons that go beyond the technical. A room out of service is lost revenue and a visible failure in front of the guest; a portfolio spread across several countries means several regulatory regimes and several sets of local contractors; and properties in pre-opening need a different discipline again, with snagging, commissioning and handover running alongside business-as-usual maintenance elsewhere. The person appointed had to lead through others across all of it rather than fix things personally.
Our Approach
Maxwell Stephens ran a thorough recruitment process built around those challenges, weighing leadership as heavily as technical facilities knowledge. We looked for evidence that candidates had run maintenance across a multi-site, multi-country hospitality estate, understood the safety and regulatory demands that come with it, and could build and motivate dispersed maintenance teams.
The Outcome
The process identified a candidate with strong leadership skills and a deep understanding of facilities management. Once in post, the Group Property Maintenance and Asset Manager reshaped Edyn's maintenance operations, and the results included:
- Zero rooms out of service, maintained through proactive maintenance initiatives, supporting guest satisfaction and retention.
- Robust safety protocols and emergency response procedures, ensuring compliance with regulatory standards and reducing risk.
- Energy conservation programmes to reduce costs and promote sustainability across the property portfolio.
- A strong sense of community and teamwork among maintenance teams, encouraging collaboration and new ideas.
Together, these changes improved the guest experience across the portfolio.
Why This Placement Worked
The brief could have been read as a technical maintenance appointment. Treating it as a leadership appointment with a technical foundation, and assessing candidates on how they ran teams at a distance and handled properties in pre-opening, produced someone who could improve the estate rather than simply keep it running.
If you are recruiting a group-level maintenance or asset management leader for a multi-site hospitality portfolio, Maxwell Stephens can help you define the brief and reach candidates with the right blend of technical and leadership experience. Get in touch with our team.