She’s been working in the hospitality trade for almost 50 years but renowned Sussex hotelier and designer Olga Polizzi, 79, shows no signs of slowing down and thinks she may have ‘one more hotel’ in her, writes our sister title Sussex Life.
For someone whose life has been shaped by both grand hotels and boardroom battles, Sussex offers a gentler pace of life for hotelier and designer Olga Polizzi.
‘I just love Sussex,’ she says from her countryside home, Friston Place, just a five-minute drive from The Star Inn in Alfriston which she owns and runs with her daughter Alex of Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector fame. ‘I love the walking, the antiques, the opera and the people.’
As the daughter of the late Lord Charles Forte, Olga – who became Lady Shawcross after she married journalist and broadcaster William Shawcross in 1993 – grew up in the hotel industry; the Forte Group was one of the largest hospitality conglomerates in the world.
But it wasn’t until her first husband, Alessandro Polizzi, the Marquess of Sorrentino, died in a car crash in 1980 – when their two daughters, Alex and Charlie, were just nine and seven – that she joined the business.
Olga and Alex are business partners as well as mother and daughter. (Image: Supplied)
‘It was my father who insisted I do,’ she explains. ‘He said: “You’ve got to earn your own living now. You’ve got to do it. Come into the company”.’
At Forte Hotels, Olga, now 79, found herself immersed in an operation of staggering scale. ‘We had about 800 hotels of all different sorts,’ she says. ‘I worked on everything from the very basic to the very, very upmarket.’ It was here that she helped design the first Travelodge room – an exercise in discipline as much as creativity and one that helped sharpen her instincts when it came to where to spend or not spend money.
‘We only had about £800 per room. That had to cover the bathroom tiling to the towels, the furniture – everything.’ The result was pared-back, practical but stylish. ‘It was all very simple, but quite attractive,’ she remembers. ‘You learned how to make things work with very little.’
Those lessons stayed with her. From designing Posthouses and Travelodges to the great hotels of Europe, such as the Hotel George V and Plaza Athénée in Paris and Hyde Park in London, Olga learned adaptability.
‘We’d often flit between 10 rooms here, a restaurant there, and that taught me an enormous amount,’ she says.
Alongside rooms and buildings, Olga saw the little things – the attention to detail – that helps shape the guest experience and it’s something that is hugely prominent across her own establishments today. She recalls the work done on Little Chef with particular fondness. ‘We’d put a lot of effort into Little Chef. They had that cheap, horrid coffee, and we put in plunge coffee machines, had sausages specially and properly made and the jams were good jams.’
But in 1995, Forte Hotels was subject to a hostile takeover by Granada.
‘My brother Rocco and I fought it for months,’ she says. ‘It was the most ridiculous takeover and so bruising for our family. It was very upsetting.
‘It could have been the most amazing company if we’d held onto it.’ Eventually, Olga and Rocco, were forced out. ‘We were sort of pushed out, and we had to go and lick our wounds,’ she says. ‘The only good thing about the takeover was that I finally got some money out of the company as my father would never let us sell any shares.’
The Star Inn is an integral part of the Alfriston village community now. (Image: Paul Massey)
Despite declaring at the time that she never wanted to see another hotel, the newfound financial freedom allowed Olga to do something radically different and on her own terms.
She decided to buy the run-down Tresanton Hotel in the south Cornish village of St Mawes, near to where her husband’s family had a property.
‘I bought Tresanton for very little, but it was in a terrible condition,’ she recalls. ‘There was water coming down everywhere. I mean, the kitchen had carpet in it. But it was in a beautiful position and all the rooms looked out to sea.’
She admits it cost a lot to do up but she was delighted with the results. ‘It was a huge success – there weren’t any real “designer” hotels in Cornwall at the time, so it garnered lots of publicity and really became our cash cow,’ she says.
It enabled Olga to purchase two more hotels – first The Endsleigh in Devon and then, during Covid, The Star Inn, which she invested in alongside Alex, 54. The inn was once a Heritage hotel – part of the Forte empire – so its opening in 2021 was somewhat of a full-circle moment.
Five years on from the initial refurbishment of The Star and it is an integral part of the Alfriston community, as well as a popular pit stop for local walkers. There’s a real connection with the local area.
The Boot Room is one of the latest additions to The Star. (Image: Paul Massey)
Olga continues to continually improve and update the 29-bedroom hotel – she’s created a boot room with hats, coats and wellies that guests can borrow, and last year saw a new terrace unveiled, as well as the opening of The Star Shop in the property next door. ‘I’m always tweaking and buying things – I’m a buyaholic!’ she admits. ‘Really we bought the shop because we wanted to expand the terrace and we now have this beautiful walled garden so two really lovely courtyards.’
Local craft is intrinsic to the hotel’s character. ‘We use a lot of local craftspeople,’ she explains. ‘I found an old lamp in my loft and loved it so had it copied by our local blacksmith, Thomas Gunter. And I buy a lot of local art and antiques.’
Amanda Lawrence of Object Trouve in Alfriston, Richard Smith fabrics in Rye and Martin D Johnson Antiques in Heathfield are just some of the other names she mentions.
The library at The Star is very cosy. (Image: Paul Massey)
Alongside her independent hotels – which now make up The Polizzi Collection – Lady Shawcross also made her way back into the family fold and is deputy chairman and director of design at Rocco Forte Hotels, now an international brand which the Saudi sovereign fund recently invested in heavily.
‘In the end, I did go in with Rocco. And it has done incredibly well. We’ve now got 14 hotels in London, Rome, Florence, Milan, Puglia, Sicily, Berlin, Munich, Brussels, and St Petersburg.’
She regularly uses the craftspeople she has met in Sussex with her design work for these hotels too.
After more than four decades in the industry, Olga slows no sign of slowing down.
‘I might have it in me to do one more on my own,’ she whispers. And there’s absolutely no doubt she does..
The hotelier is opening up her garden at Friston Place as part of The Star’s Tulip Festival. (Image: Suoplied)
Olga opens the gates of her gardens at Friston Place
Next month, Lady Shawcross will open the gardens of her home, the 16th-century Grade-I listed Friston Place, to guests as part of The Star’s Tulip Festival Retreat from Sunday, April 19 to Tuesday, April 22. Guests will be offered a glass of champagne either on the terrace or in the Great Hall, depending on what the weather is doing, and a chance to wander the gardens, which will have a display of 2,000 tulips.
The following day, there will be a private tour of Arundel Castle’s gardens, which are not normally open to the public on a Monday, before heading to Parham House for another private tour. Tuesday begins with a tour of the tulip festival and gardens at Pashley Manor, hosted by the head gardener, and then on to Great Dixter, for a private tour of this renowned garden made famous by Christopher Lloyd.
The package costs £1,108 per person based on two people sharing a Classic Juliet Room including breakfast, dinner each evening (£60 allowance per person, per night, excluding drinks), refreshments, two lunches and guided tours of all five gardens.
thepolizzicollection.com/the-star