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Award-winning hotelier Alex Polizzi and her mother, Olga, who have become equal business partners, start work on a sweeping renovation project at their 37-bedroom medieval coaching inn in east Sussex.
Richard Vranch
Self - Narrator
Alex Polizzi
Self
Olga Polizzi
Self
2021
For the last 15 years, Alex Polizzi has spent her career telling people how to run a hotel. Now she's putting her money where her mouth is - as she attempts to open one of her own. For years she helped run her mother Olga's two luxury hotels. Now for the first time they've gone into business together as equal partners. In 2019 they bought a 37-bedroom medieval coaching inn in east Sussex in need of a total overhaul. But what should have been a six-month project soon becomes an 18-month struggle. Olga and Alex are forced to deal with spiralling costs, building challenges and a global pandemic.
Alex has spent the last three months in lockdown in Cornwall with her family, overseeing the work at The Star from a distance. All work at the hotel had stopped temporarily, but it's back up and running. When Alex is able to travel to Sussex to see the renovations, it becomes clear just how far behind they are. Because of delays and the possibility of now having a Christmas opening, Alex and Olga move the opening until Easter 2021.
There has been plenty of progress around the hotel, including the bedrooms in the sixties block and the new outside courtyard. Interior designer Olga can start to bring her design vision together, and even afford a little time away to shop for antiques. This leaves Alex to oversee the parts of the hotel that are of more concern.
