CHRIS Ward | Founder
A highly experienced & respected hospitality professional with a 25-year track record of developing & delivering award-winning, commercially successful hospitality brands.
Chris has worked in senior commercial director roles at some of the best independent luxury hotels and private estates in the world, including Orient Express Hotels (now Belmond ) & three of the UK’s finest luxury hotels, Limewood, Chewton Glen & Cliveden House.
He has built multiple businesses from the ground up in the UK and internationally. This includes four years creating Adriatic Luxury Hotels in Croatia and five years in the Cotswolds, launching & growing the multi-award-winning Farncombe Estate (comprising three luxury boutique hotels - Dormy House, Foxhill Manor and The Fish).
Chris founded Hotel Makers in 2018. During his career, Chris has successfully project-managed and deployed more than £150m worth of capital, generating substantial long-term value and returns for employed owners and his clients.
james hayward | Partner
Drawing on 12 - years of wide-ranging experience across hospitality, events, FMCG & adventure travel, James specialises in creating new concepts, brand building, marketing strategy & leading creative projects for hotels & rural estates.
As Brand Director at Ennismore, a leading boutique hotel developer & operator, he defined & delivered the new vision for Gleneagles, the iconic Scottish resort. This included expansion into food & lifestyle retail, luxury adventure camps & city private members clubs. James supported the launch of Ennismore’s London restaurant business, which inspired him to gain the Level 3 advanced wines & spirits award at WSET.
Before this, he held various director-level roles at Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), leading projects within Global Brand Services, European Operations, & Consumer Insights teams.
Beyond hospitality, James has delivered creative projects for various outdoor lifestyle brands, significant events such as the Queens Diamond Jubilee & 2012 Olympic Games & product launches as part of the strategic projects team at Lucozade Sport. He has professional qualifications in brand and marketing but is also an expedition leader with a first degree in Geography & Environmental Science, leaving him well-placed to advise on hospitality concepts with the outdoors, adventure & nature at heart.
DAMIAN CLISBY | PARTNER
With a 20-year career spanning Michelin-starred kitchens, famous London restaurants, country house hotels, outdoor events & food retail, Damian is Hotel Maker’s consultant chef, F&B operations lead.
His life in food began at his grandfather’s side, learning to smoke freshly caught salmon on his farm in County Cork, and this passion for artisanal, rural, & seasonal eating shapes his work today. In addition to consultancy & assignments as a private chef, Damian has channeled this passion into creating the food offer at Hawarden Estate, reinventing their county pub & farm shop.
He also creates & hosts hugely popular workshops & food events at Glen Dye Cabins & Cottages, the Good Life Festival & Wilderness Festival - all with outdoor cooking, farm-to-table dining & sustainability at heart.
Equally at home in the city or the countryside, Damian has an ongoing restaurant residency at Frieze Art Fare, Regents Park, has developed food & beverage concepts for Hoxton Hotels & was the chef patron of Emile, a small, very successful restaurant in Shoreditch, London. He spent 4 years as Chef Director at the iconic Petersham Nurseries, developing & launching two new restaurants plus a delicatessen in Covent Garden, London. His experience also includes Hix restaurants (Head Chef), Cotswold House Hotel (Head Chef), Pied A Terre (Sous chef), The Bank, J Sheekey’s, Le Caprice, and Thyme (Sous chef).