Hand Picked Hotels has appointed Eugenio Pirri as Chief Culture Officer and David Spooner as Chief Commercial Officer, strengthening its Executive Leadership Team as the privately owned luxury hotel group enters its next phase of transformation and long-term growth.
The appointments bring together two complementary areas of leadership: culture, people and organisational transformation on one side, and commercial strategy, brand, sales, marketing and revenue performance on the other. For a collection built around individual country house hotels and coastal retreats, that balance will be important as Hand Picked Hotels continues to compete in a luxury market shaped by stronger guest expectations, rising operating costs and the need for sharper brand differentiation.
Pirri joins as Chief Culture Officer, bringing extensive international experience across culture, people, leadership and organisational transformation. His appointment places culture at executive level within a business where service, individuality and team behaviour are central to the guest proposition.
Pirri is best known for his senior leadership work at Dorchester Collection, where he joined in 2011 as Vice President, People and Organisational Development after previously serving as Regional HR Director at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts. He was later appointed Chief People and Culture Officer in 2017 and Chief Culture and Operations Executive in 2021, with responsibility spanning hotel operations, culture, guest engagement and ESG. He was subsequently promoted to joint Chief Executive Officer of Dorchester Collection before stepping down at the end of 2024 to pursue new opportunities.
That background makes the Hand Picked Hotels role notable. Pirri’s career has been built around the idea that hospitality culture cannot sit separately from operations. At Dorchester Collection, his work was associated with linking employee engagement, guest experience and leadership behaviour. Business Culture Awards has previously profiled his approach as one that moved HR away from a transactional function and towards a relationship-led culture, supported by leadership development and values-based people practices.
For Hand Picked Hotels, this matters because the group’s model depends on preserving individuality while delivering consistent service. The company describes itself as a collection of 21 family-owned luxury country houses and coastal resorts across the UK and Channel Islands, each shaped by character, heritage and relaxed luxury. It says its hotels share a commitment to local communities and first-class service, with individuality remaining central to the brand.
A Chief Culture Officer in this environment has a broad mandate. The role is not simply about internal communications or colleague engagement. It is about ensuring that hotel teams understand what the brand stands for, how service should feel, how leaders behave and how culture is maintained across a portfolio where every property has its own personality.
Spooner joins as Chief Commercial Officer, bringing experience across commercial strategy, brand, sales, marketing, revenue management and business growth within luxury hospitality. His appointment gives Hand Picked Hotels a senior commercial leader at a time when independent and privately owned hotel groups are under pressure to compete more intelligently across direct bookings, distribution, loyalty, events, food and beverage, leisure breaks and corporate demand.
The commercial brief is likely to be especially important for Hand Picked Hotels because its properties are not standardised urban boxes. Country house hotels, spa resorts and coastal retreats need a more nuanced commercial strategy. Demand is often shaped by weddings, meetings, leisure breaks, spa, dining, seasonal travel, local events and destination appeal. The role of a Chief Commercial Officer is to bring those demand streams together in a way that supports both occupancy and total revenue.
For hotel groups of this kind, commercial performance is no longer only about room sales. It requires alignment between brand, marketing, revenue management, events, distribution and guest relationship management. A hotel may attract guests through heritage and setting, but performance depends on how effectively those assets are priced, packaged, marketed and converted.
The two appointments therefore point to a broader organisational shift. Culture and commercial strategy are often treated as separate disciplines, but in hospitality they are closely connected. A strong commercial plan can bring guests through the door, but culture determines whether the experience earns repeat business, recommendation and long-term brand value. Equally, a strong culture needs commercial discipline behind it if the business is to invest in people, properties and service standards over time.
Julia Hands MBE, Chair of Hand Picked Hotels, said Pirri and Spooner bring exceptional international hospitality experience and complementary expertise to the group. She said their appointments strengthen the Executive Leadership Team at an important stage in Hand Picked Hotels’ development.
The timing is significant. Luxury hospitality in the UK is becoming more competitive, with guests expecting stronger personalisation, better food and beverage, more meaningful wellness, distinctive design and service that feels warm rather than formulaic. Privately owned collections have an advantage when they can offer character and emotional connection, but they also need the systems, leadership and commercial focus to convert that individuality into performance.
Hand Picked Hotels’ recent brand activity also points to a focus on sensory and experiential differentiation. The group recently partnered with Noble Isle on a bath and body range centred on The Greenhouse fragrance, initially launching across six hotels in the collection. That kind of initiative shows how hotel groups are looking beyond rooms alone to create more recognisable and memorable guest experiences.
In that context, Pirri’s culture mandate and Spooner’s commercial mandate should be read together. Culture will shape how the brand feels inside the hotels. Commercial strategy will shape how the brand is positioned, sold and grown. For a collection that trades on warmth, individuality and heritage, the challenge will be to professionalise without becoming generic.
The appointments also reflect a wider trend in luxury hospitality: the growing importance of senior leadership roles that sit across traditional functional lines. Chief Culture Officers are being asked to connect people, service and operating behaviour. Chief Commercial Officers are being asked to integrate sales, marketing, revenue and brand into one coherent growth engine. Both roles are becoming more strategic because hotel performance now depends on joined-up thinking.
For Hand Picked Hotels, the addition of Pirri and Spooner gives the Executive Leadership Team deeper capability in two areas that matter most to the next stage of the business: how the company grows, and how it protects the culture that makes its hotels distinctive.
As the group moves into its next phase, the test will be whether these appointments help Hand Picked Hotels strengthen its identity while improving performance across the portfolio. In independent luxury hospitality, that is the real challenge: scale the business without flattening the character that made the collection valuable in the first place.
