Rapleys continues strategic growth with launch of hospitality team

– Sam Gough joins as Associate Partner and Imogen Bellfield joins as Senior Surveyor from Avison Young (AY)

– New team led by Pippa Harrison, former European head of AY Hospitality and PBSA Capital markets who joined in April

– Rapleys has added new retail and office teams to its Commercial Division over the last two years

Rapleys has continued to grow its commercial offering following its appointment of Pippa Harrison, as Head of Hospitality, with two further team members joining.

Sam Gough joins as Associate Partner and Imogen Bellfield as Senior Surveyor.  All three came from Avison Young.

The move follows other recent acquisitions in Rapleys’ Commercial Division including a team of seven retail agency and investment experts brought in from AY last year, led by Dan Kent, and the purchase of office experts Mellersh & Harding.

Sam Gough was Associate at AY, specialising in hotels as part of the wider Capital Markets group. He has over seven years’ experience in transactions and advisory. Imogen Bellfield also joins as Senior Surveyor with two years’ dedicated experience in the hotel market, both in advisory and capital markets, with a growing track record of disposals and acquisitions of both managed and fixed-income hotels.

The team also has a track record in PBSA and other operational real estate, which complements the existing Residential, Planning and Building Consultancy Divisions who work across Alternative markets by adding agency and investment expertise, in line with Rapleys’ collaborative culture and full-service disciplinary teams.

Daniel Cook, Head of Commercial at Rapleys, said: “Sam and Imogen (and Pippa) are fantastic additions to our Commercial Division, building on our recent diversification with strong retail and office teams serving a broad client base alongside our existing market leading Automotive, Roadside and Future Fuels team. We are extremely happy and excited to have their specialist hospitality and operational real estate expertise within the business and to have them on board as part of the wider Commercial team where we can collaborate across the sectors and divisions to enhance our services offered to our clients. We will continue to strengthen our position with specialist, experienced teams, and services in line with our ongoing strategic growth plan over the coming months, both for Commercial and the other Divisions within Rapleys.”

Pippa Harrison added: “I am delighted to welcome Sam and Imogen to Rapleys to help me build the Hospitality team, having worked closely together on supporting clients on investment transactions, development, and strategic advisory in our former roles with great success. Rapleys is incredibly supportive of embedding our capital markets team within both the Commercial Division and wider business and continuing to explore further opportunities to help deliver specialist advice in Hospitality and also the wider Operational Real Estate sector as part of a joined-up approach.” 

Rapleys has been strategically growing for three years now, building up and diversifying its business to add services and people that will serve its increasing client portfolio. As well as Commercial, where it has brought in new clients such as Sainsburys, Stansted Airport (MAG) and Boots, Rapleys has added several Building Consultancy services (including Health & Safety, Retrofitting and Measured Surveys), Planning (Datacentres and Renewables) and Residential (Public Sector focus). In 2025, the business also launched a new Cardiff team, which it has since trebled in size, and doubled the size of its Manchester and Birmingham teams.