A frown called Alex

ALEX POLIZZI, whose family are akin to hotel royalty, is not exactly delighted to be compared with Gordon Ramsay. But her show, The Hotel Inspector, is not dissimilar to the celebrity chef’s Kitchen Nightmares – rancid restaurants are replaced by horrid hotels, and the potty-mouthed Ramsay substituted for the feisty and dynamic Alex.

“I hope I curse less,” she says of the comparison. “What can I say? I suppose it is similar, in a way. I would like to think that I am understanding why people fail, but the premise is the same.

We’re just trying to turn around the fortunes of these hotels.”

When it comes to turning such flagging businesses into profitable ventures, few have better credentials than 38-year-old Alex.

The daughter of hotelier and interior designer Olga Polizzi, the granddaughter of Lord Forte and niece of Sir Rocco Forte of the Rocco Forte hotel chain, Alex has the industry in her blood.

But it was never assumed that she would continue the family tradition.

“I think my parents always hoped that I would do something more bourgeois, like medicine or law or politics,” she says.

“But I never wanted to do anything but this industry, because I always thought it was one of the best industries you can possibly work in.”

Eager to avoid any accusations of nepotism, after graduating from Oxford University, Alex decided to train at the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong – where her family didn’t own a hotel.

“I didn’t want anyone to think I was a spoilt little girl,” she says in her cut-glass English accent. “As a young, fairly attractive female, I think you have to prove yourself several times over anyway, let alone with a family which is in the same industry.”

She then worked with Hell’s Kitchen chef Marco Pierre White at The Criterion, who she says “can be a right bd”.

“He’s like a shark, he can sense blood in the water and he really goes for it. He likes mind games, and to think he’s cleverer than everyone else, which I don’t think he is actually. I just think he’s meaner.”

Following stints at Rocco Forte hotels in Cardiff, Rome and St Petersburg, Alex assisted her mother in setting up the awardwinning Tresanton Hotel in Cornwall before becoming proprietor of the five-star Endsleigh Hotel in Devon.

It was here she was spotted by one of the producers of The Hotel Inspector and considered the perfect replacement for original host Ruth Watson.

“I do know my stuff about hotels so I was quite confident about my professional ability, it was just the TV side that was nerve-wracking,” Alex says.

“I was pregnant at the time and was looking for something that was slightly more conducive to family life than managing a hotel, so when they asked me if I would be willing to do it I thought I would give it a go.”

In this fifth series of The Hotel Inspector – Alex’s second – she casts her expert eye over a number of horrid hotels of which she says The Crown Inn, featured in the opening episode, stood out as particularly shocking.

“The bathroom was just... Well, it was the only hotel where I refused to have a shower. I didn’t sit on that loo seat, I didn’t walk in that bathroom with bare feet,” she says.

“I don’t think you can quite see the horrors that the naked eye saw, it was just repulsive.”

Like The Crown Inn’s proprietor did, Alex says many hoteliers blame everyone and everything around them for their failure, rather than take blame themselves.

Now used to meeting people who enter the hotel business with no experience or training, she always finds their ignorance annoying.

“I wonder how they can be so arrogant to think they can just stroll into this new career.

“As the owner you need to make sure that you look after every department yourself and not assume that housekeeping happens by some maid that you never have to talk to or that you never have to check a room yourself,” Alex says.

Now filming has finished, Alex is heading back to her hotel in Devon, which she describes as “a thing of beauty”.

“My hotel is suffering as well as any hotel at the moment, and it’s suffered from my absence too,” she says.

“I am planning to spend a large chunk of the summer down there kicking everyone into shape again.”