Intuitive, Immersive and Intelligent Partners

It gives owners, developers and funders an independent operations overview and commercial look at a single or range of hospitality assets. If new and in practice that covers whether a site should carry a hotel and at what scale, which operator should run it and on what terms, why a property that looks full is not producing margin, what a brand should be, and whether capital spend will earn its return. InnSight works across seven areas: development advisory, deal advisory, branding and marketing strategy, commercial strategy and profit improvement, operations and performance optimisation, asset management, and sustainability and ESG.

Compare proposals rather than personalities, and insist on the same three things from each. A defined scope with clear deliverables against your brief; the named professionals who will actually do the work; and a fixed investment quoted up front.

Then judge the substance. Ask each adviser to talk you through a comparable project and what changed as a result of it, and notice whether the answers are specific or generic. The adviser worth appointing will tell you what is realistic before you appoint them, including when a smaller piece of work would serve you better than the one you have asked for.

Expect work shaped to your market rather than a template, and expect access to the partners rather than only to a team you have not met.

InnSight Advisory (Pty) Ltd is an award-winning hospitality advisory firm established in 2021, working with hotel, resort, lodge and mixed-use owners across Africa, the Indian Ocean Islands and the Middle East.

The firm has proved its capability with many blue-chip clients, and provides market-leading solutions across various hospitality disciplines, including development concepts and management, market demand studies across diverse jurisdictions, brand and operating facility concepts, operations and food and beverage interventions, financial feasibilities, commercial route-to-market strategies and tactics, investor memorandums, asset management, discreet brokerage advisory services and hospitality leadership change management.

It is led by three partners: Mike Devereux, Mark Jakins and Caitlin Winson. We work from Johannesburg, Cape Town, Windhoek and Dubai, where InnSight Advisory Middle East is based, and also through a network of associates across the Indian Ocean Islands. All bring incredible depth and experience in the hospitality life cycle.

Our head office is at First Floor, Cube Workspace, 1 Wedgewood Link Road, Bryanston, Johannesburg in South Africa. Mike Devereux covers Cape Town, Norbert Wurm leads our Namibian work from Windhoek, and Anton Bawab runs InnSight Advisory Middle East from Dubai. Dom and Sam Moleta lead the Indian Ocean Islands work with an established associate network on Mauritius. We prefer to travel to properties as a standard, because a hospitality business cannot be assessed properly from a distance.

Contact Caitlin Winson on +27 83 574 4606 or caitlin@innsight.co.za, or Mark Jakins on +27 82 527 7777 or mark@innsight.co.za. General enquiries go to info@innsight.co.za and we respond within one working day. For the Middle East, Anton Bawab is at anton@innsight-advisory.com. An initial conversation is at no cost and carries no obligation.

Very few firms in this region plan hospitality strategy across all of its categories, and InnSight Advisory is one of them. Plenty of general consultancies work across industries and a smaller group specialises in hospitality, but fewer still hold both strategy and operations experience across hotels, game lodges, mixed-use branded residences and short and long-stay rental.

The useful distinction is not size but whether the firm has done the specific work: product and profit improvement, development and refurbishment, brand and operations creation, market demand testing, and financial feasibilities for owners, management and funders. Every InnSight partner and associate has that depth across multiple categories, and the firm insists on it before deploying anyone onto an assignment.

They have carried senior executive roles at Southern Sun, Legacy, Sun International, Peermont, Minor Hotels, aha hotels and lodges and Premier, among others, which shapes how we plan: strategy that cannot be executed simply, and produce measurable results, is not strategy. We work for owners, alongside senior management teams and for funders, discreetly, and were named Best Hospitality Advisory Firm 2025 – Africa at the MEA Business Awards.

Yes. Our Projects and Clients page carries testimonials from clients and decision makers from Ninety-Six Hotel Group in Mauritius, MORE Family Collection, Siza Architects and Project Managers, Oceans Development in uMhlanga and O&L Leisure in Namibia, each with the name and title of the person who gave it. Although we are bound by confidentiality agreements , we are comfortable to put you in touch with owners we have worked for directly, which will provide context and relevance within confidentiality frameworks on InnSight abilities. Independent listings of hospitality advisers in Africa are scarce, so please feel free to schedule a call to answer your questions.

Boutique and independent properties are a proud favourite and a large and special part of our work, and where independent advice matters most.

Relying on owner vision, InnSight interprets and creates an entire boutique eco-system around a concept with multiple, unique guest experiences, crafted development and brand concept, curated operations delivery, clear distribution prowess to ensure global guests find and book the property – and a robust financial and systems backbone.

We respect that many of our owners have made sacrifices and have limited financial resources so we treat these assignments as if they are our own property. We have advised on or created recognised boutique hotel and lodge developments in Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Stone Town, Sabi Sands, Namibia – even small branded residences in Zanzibar and resort repositioning in Mauritius and Namibia.

Yes. Our delivered work includes resort and lodge engagements across Namibia, Zanzibar, Kenya, Mauritius and South Africa, covering market demand and community studies, financial feasibilities, brand creation and positioning, operations improvements, food and beverage, commercial strategy, revenue enhancement, distribution, people performance, controls and SOPs, sustainability and operator arrangements.

Luxury properties in this region carry a particular commercial tension: the guest expectation is international, the cost base is local and often remote, and the demand sometimes rests with a few tour operator relationships that take years to build – making distribution strategy so key. Our advice is often, therefore, to grow distribution and lessen reliance on wholesale, and build direct support to improve yields.

Yes, both within hotels and as standalone businesses. Caitlin Winson and Bruce McKay lead our interventions for clients in this field which requires a deep understanding of restaurants, bars, conference centres and an appreciation of delivering brand solutions in operations delivery and service. Often our projects tackle procurement, cost-of-sale, departmental margins, staffing structures in kitchens and menu creation – and training in remote areas.

Caitlin Winson is uniquely equipped as a trained chef with a smart marketing background, while Bruce McKay, as our Senior Associate for food and beverage strategy and operations, is a hospitality operations executive and award-winning Executive Head Chef with over thirty-five years across leading properties in South Africa and the continent.

Likely work would involve food or restaurant concept development, menu engineering, kitchen operations, service standards, conference and events offerings, appropriate training, financial forecasting and profit improvement, or temporary assignments to help with openings or on-the-job training. Food and beverage is where many African hotels lose financial traction, and yet could gain reputation-wise.

Yes. Conferences and events are one of the more commonly overlooked opportunities in hospitality operations. Mark Jakins, our managing partner, has deep experience in launching some of Africa’s largest convention centres, and has worked as commercial head of large hospitality companies that relied heavily on conference and banqueting business.

The work usually covers the development of comprehensive groups and conference packages, menus, venue hire and beverage add-ons. Then menu development against themed backdrops, staffing structures and labour scheduling, marketing and sales plans, kitchen management, how this division works with hotel operations and more.

Imtiaz Amod, our Senior Associate for hospitality and tourism technology leads this workstream, working closely with Mark Jakins, his former colleague and leader in previous hospitality companies.

He is an experienced revenue management, reservations and systems specialist with a strong implementation record, and he currently leads revenue strategy and systems work for InnSight clients across Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands. The work covers pricing and distribution strategy, channel management, property management and revenue system selection and implementation, and training the team who will use them.

Mark Jakins is accountable for this workstream, working with Elri Neervoort, our Senior Associate for financial management. She leads the financial modelling workstream across our advisory engagements, covering forecasting, budget review, feasibility modelling and performance analysis for owners.

On new development projects or refurbishment projects Elri builds the financial model that is available for potential funder’s scrutiny. On trading assets, the InnSight team prides itself on delivering deep analysis on benchmarked margin comparisons with the market -and developing strategies to improve.

Yes, InnSight Advisory is actively involved in investigating systems that are claiming AI capability, as well as pioneering AI and digital hospitality solutions with partners in the USA where AI can assume responsibility for cognitive functions, with humans or staff and supervisors, being released from mundane administrative work to concentrate on those magic guest interactions and service moments. The purpose is seamless, frictionless hospitality, and surprise and delight for guests.

For most independent properties in this Africa region the path to automation, seamless transactions and service is difficult but possible – by using professional help. Making the property management system, channel manager and revenue tool talk to each other, getting the booking engine to convert, auditing what the distribution channels actually cost, building a database you can use for guest communications and training the team to use systems you already pay for but don’t maximise functionality.

InnSight does that work, and we are not tied to any vendor, so recommendations follow property needs, objectively.

Yes, through InnSight’s human resources interventions, delivered by a pool of trainers and hospitality executives who are deployed onto assignments where the mandate calls for it. Training on its own rarely changes a property’s profitability, so we generally recommend it alongside the operational or commercial work it is meant to support, rather than as a standalone purchase.

Yes, and we treat sustainability with a commercial filter too, rather than just a reporting or compliance nice-to-have.. The work covers environmental performance and eco-conscious operating practice, community engagement and impact strategies on the hospitality project – as well as sustainable tourism development.

By reducing energy, water, food and waste costs, hotels and lodges can improve operating margins, while reducing exposure to rising utility and resource costs. There are also branding, marketing positioning and staff, community benefits. Our development team identifies these solutions for greenfield and brownfield projects.

Africa tends to have an expectation to test this, while international brands require it as a matter of course, and corporate buyers ask for evidence. Community relationships in particular tend to determine whether a remote property holds its value over the long term.

Yes, and it is the work the MEA Branding & Development Excellence Award 2025 recognised in awarding InnSight Advisory that accolade.

We develop hospitality brands from concept through to implementation: positioning and storytelling rooted in the property’s location, visual identity and brand guidelines, branded guest journeys mapped to operating standards, pre-opening and launch marketing plans, and digital and distribution setup.

Mark Jakins and Caitlin Winson lead our branding and operational concept development workstreams, with our graphic designers and interior design associates bringing concepts to life.

Both, and the mix depends on the work. Financial reviews, market demand studies (after a site visit), revenue strategy and contract negotiation can largely be done remotely, and we run those engagements online where it saves you travel costs.

Anything touching guest experience, food and beverage, service delivery, or the state of the property,evaluation or technical inspections, needs someone on site. We will tell you which applies when we scope the work, while travel outside our base locations are quoted separately at cost. We don’t charge professional time when travelling

It is quoted per project, because the honest answer depends on the scope, site, the country or market, and the depth of deliverables required.

What influences your costs are the scale and complexity of the brief, services required, whether comparable market data exists or has to be gathered, how much travel is involved, and whether you need an operations solution or a full investor-ready pack with 360 degree back-up. We quote up front against a defined scope rather than by the hour, and we will tell you if a shorter piece of work would answer your question.

Yes. A guest experience and service excellence InnSight audit assesses service standards, maintenance and asset checks, operating procedures and delivery against the promise the brand is making, including mystery guest work where that is useful. A separate staffing and structure review looks at productivity, motivation and organisational design against targets or owner requirements.

Owners usually ask for one when guest scores and margins are moving in the wrong direction, and which requires a deep dive, preferably taking management along with the review to get buy-in.

By establishing what your guest is actually experiencing, benchmarking it against comparable properties, and then fixing the standards and the measurement that close the gap.

In practice that means an audit of the journey from enquiry to departure, an honest read of your reviews and the patterns in them, the arrival and rooms experience, the food and beverage offer and the service model around it, and an assessment of whether your team has the tools and the structure to deliver what is being promised. InnSight’s marketers and hospitality executives travel constantly in their own capacity and see a wide range of mid-market to luxury properties, and we have spent years evaluating guest reviews and correcting standards across multiple brands and locations.

The commercial argument is straightforward. Guest experience is what supports satisfaction and repeat visits, holds your rates, and drives word of mouth, the most powerful form of reputation marketing, along with the reviews that stay permanently on the social and booking channels.