Built from inside the hospitality profession.
Welcome to Agility Hospitality
Agility Hospitality was created to help hospitality businesses improve performance in a practical, sustainable way.
We understand the pressure hotels face every day: rising labour costs, fluctuating demand, stretched teams, inconsistent processes and the need to protect the guest experience while improving productivity.
Our work is built around a simple belief:
Hospitality businesses do not need more theory. They need practical solutions that actually work in day-to-day operations.
Agility Hospitality was founded to address a gap in the hospitality profession.
Lean, Six Sigma and continuous improvement methods have been widely promoted for many years. But too often, they have been delivered in a way that feels too theoretical, too complex or disconnected from the realities of hotel operations.
They were often designed for other sectors.
Adapted for hospitality.
And difficult for hotel teams to apply in the middle of a busy operation.
Agility Hospitality was created to change that.
We apply proven improvement principles in a way that is practical, accessible and grounded in how hospitality teams actually work.
Most teams are not underperforming because of effort.
They are constrained by how work flows.
Behind the scenes, everyday hotel processes often contain hidden friction.
Tasks may be structured in ways that create delays. Labour may be scheduled against revenue rather than guest volume. Systems may not reflect operational reality. Decisions may be made without the right visibility.
These issues do not always show up clearly in reports.
But they show up every day in:
- unnecessary pressure on teams
- inconsistent service delivery
- avoidable rework
- wasted time
- reduced profitability
- weaker operational control
When processes, systems and behaviours are not aligned, work becomes harder than it needs to be.
Our role is to help teams identify where that friction exists, understand why it is happening and implement better ways of working.
Built for hospitality. Not adapted to it.
Agility Hospitality applies continuous improvement principles in a way that is practical, scalable and grounded in real hotel operations.
Our approach is designed around the environments hospitality teams operate in every day:
- live service
- fluctuating demand
- multiple departments
- complex handovers
- time pressure
- guest expectations that cannot be paused while a project is underway.
Everything we do is designed to work in practice, not just in theory.
Practical
We focus on tools, routines and recommendations teams can actually use.
Scalable
Our approach can support one property, multiple hotels or a wider portfolio.
People-centred
We improve productivity by reducing friction and waste, not by asking teams to work harder or faster.
Data-led
We use operational data to identify where the opportunity exists.
Observation-led
We go into the operation to understand why the opportunity exists.
Meet the Team
Behind every engagement is a team with deep operational experience in hospitality, training, workflow improvement, labour optimisation and performance management.
Agility Hospitality combines senior hotel operations experience with practical improvement expertise, data-led analysis and a strong understanding of how change is adopted at property level.
Tom Mc Dermott
Founder & Managing Director
Tom Mc Dermott founded Agility Hospitality in 2020. He brings more than 35 years of senior leadership experience across international hotel operations and hospitality businesses.
Tom has worked across global hospitality brands including Starwood Hotels and Resorts, Cunard &
Seabourn Cruise Line, Radisson and Hilton Hotels.
Throughout his career, Tom has seen first-hand why many improvement initiatives fail to stick. The
issue is rarely a lack of effort. More often, it is a lack of practical systems, clear ownership and operational routines that teams can actually use.
Tom founded Agility Hospitality to bring practical, hospitality-specific continuous improvement into a profession where traditional methodologies often fail to translate.
His focus is simple:
Help hospitality businesses improve performance, build internal capability and embed lasting change.
- 35+ years' international hotel operations leadership
- Former General Manager and Director of Operational Effectiveness EMEA at Hilton
- Specialist in workflow improvement and operational productivity
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
- Experience across individual properties, international brands and multi-site hotel portfolios
Our Associate Network
Grace-Ann Fallon, Hospitality & Training Specialist
Grace-Ann brings over 25 years of hands-on experience across every area of hotel operations, from frontline roles through to Director level and General Management.
Having worked with global brands including Four Seasons, Conrad, Hilton, IHG and leading independent hotels, she brings a deep understanding of both the guest journey and the employee experience.
Grace-Ann works closely with client teams to embed practical improvements into daily operations, ensuring changes are not only implemented, but sustained.
Her passion lies in simplifying processes, improving team culture, and seeing how small, well-executed changes deliver meaningful results across the business.
Simon Povall, Change & Training Specialist
Simon Povall is a highly experienced hospitality professional and training facilitator with over 30 years’ experience across Ireland and the UK.
At Agility Hospitality, Simon leads the delivery of our Continuous Improvement workshops, working with leadership teams and frontline colleagues to embed practical, sustainable improvements in day-to-day operations. Known for his engaging and relatable style, he translates improvement concepts into clear, actionable steps that drive real results on the front line of hospitality operations.
Simon brings deep operational expertise, having spent 28 years in hospitality across hotels, fine dining, and contract catering, alongside senior commercial experience as a Business Development Director. This combination allows him to link operational improvement directly to service quality, team performance, and cost control.
He also plays a key role in Agility’s process observation work, analysing live operations to identify inefficiencies, improve workflows, and support teams in implementing smarter ways of working. Simon holds a professional diploma in Change Management and is recognised for his strengths in facilitation, coaching, and leadership development helping organisations build the capability to sustain improvement long after the initial engagement.
Ali Honour, Associate Executive Chef Consultant
Ali Honour is an Executive Chef and food systems leader with over 30 years’ experience transforming culinary operations across hospitality, catering, and large-scale food programmes.
At Agility Hospitality, Ali brings a specialist culinary lens to our process analysis work helping clients streamline kitchen operations, improve productivity, reduce waste, and enhance food quality without compromising commercial performance.
Her work sits at the intersection of people, planet, and performance, supporting organisations to redesign food operations that are both efficient and future-fit.
She combines culinary credibility with a data-led approach to ensure sustainability initiatives translate into practical, scalable improvements within real kitchen environments.
Ali’s focus includes zero waste operations, low carbon menu design, regenerative sourcing, and circular “farm-to-fork” systems helping hospitality businesses reduce cost, improve workflow, and respond to evolving guest expectations.
She is particularly valued for her ability to turn complex challenges into clear, actionable solutions whether improving kitchen flow, aligning procurement with demand, or embedding smarter ways of working across teams.
Improvement should be bottom-up and leader-led.
Sustainable improvement does not happen because a report says what should change.
It happens when leaders create the conditions for change, and team members are empowered to improve the work they do every day.
That is why Agility Hospitality focuses on capability transfer.
We help businesses build the skills, systems and routines needed to identify problems, act on the right priorities and sustain improvement long after the project ends.
Our approach helps create a culture where improvement is not something done to the team. It is something built with the team.
Practical improvement. Real ownership. Lasting results.
Agility Hospitality is not a traditional consultancy model built around dependency.
We work with clients to create clarity, ownership and momentum.
We combine:
- operational experience
- observation-led analysis
- data-led analytics
- practical training
- workflow improvement
- labour optimisation
- implementation support
This helps hospitality businesses move from insight to action, and from action to measurable improvement.
The goal is not simply to identify what is wrong. The goal is to help teams fix it, own it and sustain it.
Ready to improve how your operation works?
If you want to understand where time, labour and margin are being lost, and how to fix it in a way your teams can sustain, we can help.