Meet CMA

CMA was initially based on the 17 years operating experience gained by Chris Morton running hotels, restaurants, bars, health and fitness clubs, catering services at a number of conference & exhibition centres and outside catering operations.

Industry Experience
Within this period Chris managed two London based restaurant groups operating a range of restaurants from a 1 star Michelin restaurant to a range of popular eating houses, opened one of the UK’s first health and fitness centres, managed a 3 Star hotel and took it to a 4 star status, developed a conference & exhibition catering division and managed an unit 11 hotel company. On the way he also managed a country pub for 12 months – for a break!

In 1994 Chris joined international hotel & tourism consultants Pannell Kerr Forster Associates and spent three years undertaking hotel feasibility studies on four different continents.

CMA Background
CMA was formed in 1991 and has undertaken hotel feasibility studies, market reviews, restaurant and health & fitness studies. Catering market and operational studies and tender reviews have also been undertaken for public sector organisations including NHS Trusts, museums and visitor attractions.

Services & a Few of our Clients
CMA also specialises in market analysis through demographic market analysis. We have developed effective leisure market models to assess the demand for leisure and health & fitness developments and regularly assist local authorities in understanding the levels of demand for various leisure activities. Over the last 10 years regular clients have included Virgin Active for whom we have undertaken numerous site demand assessments and assisted them by profile their existing members, thereby identifying market development opportunities.

Chris has also worked closely with the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund for more than 10 years assisting them to gauge the impact of oil spills on tourism businesses and assessing the levels of economic loss suffered by individual businesses. This work has included area and business assessments in the UK, France, Spain, Japan and the Philippines, including reviews of more than 5,500 tourism claim assessments – gaining a valuable insight into the operations of all types of tourism businesses in several different areas of the world.

Meet Some of the Team
Today the company has three full time employees: Chris, Kathryn Morton, who specialises in demographic market profiling and Serena Cowell, formerly of the Egon Ronay organisation, who assists client projects and undertakes market research.

This core team is assisted by other specialists including Graham Bancroft, a leisure retail specialist and Rory Malcolm, a specialist leisure market analyst. Through a range of contacts – including leisure architects, economists and market researchers – we are also able to field multi-disciplinary teams to meet the needs of most assignments.