SA CEO Programme, spring 2027 cohort. Maximum 15 places. Early sign-up price £7,500.Apply now
A lounge designed by Samantha McHattie

Serviced accommodation specialists

Serviced accommodation is a hospitality business, not a property strategy.

We build, run and teach serviced accommodation the way professional hoteliers would. Each year we work directly with a small number of serious operators, and most of them start by reading.

Read The SA Paradigm How we work with you
McH and Co

Airbnb Guest Favourites

Every home we run

PIN Best SA Award

2025

Lux Life Magazine Best SA Award

North West England 2026

SA experts and educators

PIN Home Study and Mastermind programmes

Same house. Two very different questions.

Most serviced accommodation education starts with property and works backwards. We start with the guest and work forwards. Choosing a good management partner, or running it yourself, takes more capability, not less.

The property investor asksWhat's the yield?
The hospitality operator asksWho is this for?

The SA CEO Programme, spring 2027 cohort

A year-long mastermind that begins inside our own properties.

A one-year mastermind for serious operators. It starts with three days living and learning in our Airbnbs, then continues for twelve months working directly with David and Samantha, alongside a small cohort facing the same decisions.

  1. Three-day residentialStay in our properties and see how award-winning serviced accommodation runs from the inside.
  2. Twelve weeks of weekly callsMomentum while it matters most, building on what you learned at the residential.
  3. Nine months of monthly callsAccountability as you research, buy, build and launch.
Apply for a place

Coming soon · One scholarship place every cohort

The SA CEO Challenge is returning.

We are committed to one fully funded scholarship place on every SA CEO Programme we run. It goes to the winner of the SA CEO Challenge, chosen on the merit of their submission. If the winner has already signed up, we refund their fee in full, so there is no reason to wait. Last year’s winner, John Smits, joined the programme on a fully complimentary scholarship.

The next four-day Challenge will be announced soon. Register your interest and we will tell you first.

We will only use this to tell you about the Challenge. See our privacy policy.

A bedroom in one of our homes
StartsSpring 2027
PlacesMaximum 15
Price£9,000
Early sign-up price£7,500
Sign up early. Secure the £7,500 price, with the option to pay in five instalments of £1,500. Your participation begins with your first payment, with an introductory call and support from day one, and an invitation to the 2026 cohort's calls from December 2026. Your year then starts with the residential.

What's included

  • Direct access to David and Samantha, with advice and guidance at every turn
  • Demand reports researched and prepared for your target areas
  • Design advice from Samantha
  • The Boardroom, our invitation-only Substack, with guidance notes and Macro and Micro demand reports
  • The Financial Artefact, exclusive to the programme

    “Worth the fee by itself.”

    Chris S, Cohort No. 1, 2026

Five gaps separate amateur operators from professional ones.

Close them and the numbers follow. Leave them open and no amount of occupancy will save the return.

A bedroom with a velvet headboard and wall lights
01

Strategic acquisition intelligence

Read the demand before you view a property. We evaluate houses as businesses, not assets, and the research comes first.

Most investors find a property and then look for reasons to buy it. We start with the market: who visits, why they come, when, and what they can already book. Then the neighbourhood, and only then the house. Software forecasts show you the floor, what the average operator achieves. Where they exist, the hotels show you the ceiling.

  • The market. Visitor numbers, what brings people, the seasons and the supply already serving them.
  • The neighbourhood. Whether it can reach that demand: stations, routes and the walk to what guests came for.
  • The property. What it can sleep, what it costs to buy and run, and the return against your goal.
How we research a market
The lounge in the Albion loft apartment
02

Revenue architecture

Engineer profit, not occupancy. A busy calendar at the wrong rate is just a tired property.

Revenue is the number that pays a management company. Profit is the number that pays you. Start from what a stay costs you, decide the least you will accept per stay, and price for the guest you want rather than the empty nights you fear. In 2025 Magazine covered a year of fixed costs at about 21% occupancy. Every stay after that was contribution.

  • Know your floor. Fixed costs, per-stay costs and the contribution each stay leaves.
  • Give price its three jobs. Leave a profit, attract the right guest and protect your position.
  • Sell the night people book. Four in five UK hotel bookings in 2025 were for one night.
Read Pricing Judgements, free
Stacked vintage books beside a brass candlestick
03

Design as conversion

Design that earns its rate, chosen for the guest you want, not the catalogue you were sent.

The photographs sell the stay before a guest reads a word. Samantha designs every home for the guest it is meant for: the colour, comfort and detail that stop the scroll, and the practicality that stands up to a turnover every few days. It is also why our homes value well. A property presented this well is better than almost anything else a valuer sees that week.

  • Designed for a named guest, not assembled from a catalogue.
  • Built for turnover. Durable, cleanable and easy to replace.
  • Matched to the guests it sleeps. Bathrooms, beds and space planned around the full house.
The Ticking Stripe
Lamps, flowers and a mirror on a hall console
04

Guest experience systems

Standards that hold whether you're there or not. That's what turns a stay into a recommendation.

Guests judge a stay on the moments you are not there for: arriving, finding things, the shower at seven in the morning, leaving. Our standards are not a manual on a shelf. They are ingrained in everyone who looks after our homes, and so is the importance of a five-star review. We don't cut corners or take the line of least resistance, and every stay is supported by systems and processes. We never ask our guests for reviews, and 75.1% of them leave one anyway.

  • Communication that helps. Four scheduled messages, and no chasing.
  • A stay, not a list of chores. No checkout tasks and no notes on the fridge.
  • Every comment acted on. Reviews are read as evidence, and the house changes because of them.
A Stay, Not an Opportunity for Labour
A loft bedroom under a skylight
05

Market positioning

Be the obvious choice for a specific guest, so you're never competing on price alone.

Most markets are full of average listings. A market full of 4.4-star stays is not saturated, it is waiting. Know who your guest is, why they are coming and what they would book instead, then build the stay around them. Become the obvious choice for that guest and price stops being your only lever.

  • The guest named before the property is bought.
  • Benchmarked against the hotel they would otherwise book, not the listing next door.
  • Photos, words and reviews that speak to that guest.
“Saturated” Is the Wrong Word

Two ordinary houses. Run like hotels.

The lounge at Arkles, Anfield

Arkles, Anfield

Three-bedroom terrace, sleeps five

£129,000Purchase price
£50,6192025 revenue
£24,7612025 profit after all costs
Guest FavouriteAirbnb

Profit after all costs, including mortgage. 2025 was the first full year of trading.

Read the case study
A bedroom at Magazine, New Brighton

Magazine, New Brighton

Five-bedroom townhouse, sleeps ten

£157,000Purchase price
£330,000Current open market value
£83,5342025 revenue
£39,9712025 profit after all costs

Profit after all costs, including mortgage. 2025 was the first full year of trading.

Read the case study

Four ways to work with us directly.

Each is deliberately limited, so the people we take on get our full attention.

A striped armchair in the Albion loft
2 to 3 projects a year

Turnkey

We source, renovate, design and launch the business. You own it.

Request an introduction
The dining table at Magazine
Spring 2027, maximum 15 places

SA CEO Programme

A one-year mastermind, starting with three days in our properties.

Apply for a place
A bedroom with a red door and framed prints
Six-month minimum

Coaching and mentoring

Direct, bespoke counsel for a small number of operators.

Apply to be considered
A bedroom with a patterned frieze and upholstered headboard
Commissions open

The Ticking Stripe

Samantha's heritage-led design studio. Design that earns its rate.

Enquire about a commission

A good fit if

you see serviced accommodation as a business to run well, and value expertise as an investment.

Probably not if

you're looking for passive income, the cheapest option or a shortcut.

Not ready for direct work? Start here.

Learn to read demand the way we do, step by step, and then run the research yourself.

1

Free

Reading demand

A free introductory post in The SA Paradigm on why a property search is a research project: the market, then the neighbourhood, then the property.

Subscribe free
2

Paid subscribers

The Macro and Micro reads

Two paid posts: “Is This a Good Place to Invest?” and “Is This the Right Neighbourhood?”

Become a paid subscriber
3

Two PDFs, one method

The Acquisition Toolkit

The Acquisition Decision Tree and the Self-Research Prompt Pack, Parts 1 and 2. The order we make acquisition decisions in, and the prompts to gather the evidence yourself.

£295

Credited in full against the SA CEO Programme if you join within 12 months.

Buy the Toolkit
David and Samantha McHattie

Our story

David and Samantha McHattie

We spent our careers in hospitality and business leadership, from trainee manager to chief executive. In 2023 we bought two ordinary houses, in Anfield and New Brighton, and ran them the way a good hotel would.

Every home we run is an Airbnb Guest Favourite, and the UK's two leading property networks ask us to teach how. We still run every property ourselves.

The SA Paradigm

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No sales calls. If there's ever a fit for direct work, you'll hear about it here first.