LOVE her or hate her you cannot help but admire Stephanie Booth’s determination to succeed.

Her chain of hostelries – Llangollen Hotels – is well known having featured prominently in a TV documentary series centred on its flamboyant owner and broadcast on BBC Wales last year.

Mrs Booth already has three large establishments in Llangollen, two in Ruthin and another on the picturesque moors of Llandegla. This week she officially adds the historic Wynnstay Arms in Wrexham town centre to her portfolio and to document the transition the cameras will be back filming a second series of Hotel Stephanie, due to be aired later this year.

But despite her success in the hospitality industry, Mrs Booth never intended to become a hotelier – it happened, she says, quite by accident.

“Bodidris (Hall, Llandegla) was the first hotel we bought,” she recalls. “We run 11 other companies and David (her husband) and I used to go up there to hold meetings.

“Anyway, the managers said to us one day: ‘The owner is coming over from America tonight and we think he’s going to sell’.

“I said ‘if he does decide to sell, let us know’, and sure enough he called that night and asked us to have breakfast with him the next morning. So we bought it over breakfast.

“We just thought ‘we’re both pensioners and this will be something for us in our dotage’. Of course, from there we got the hospitality bug.”

And it is a bug that continues to gnaw at the multi-millionaire businesswoman, one that has prompted her to invest in the Wynnstay Arms.

“When the details came through, at first I wasn’t sure about it and when we went to have a look around it was in a dreadful state.

“But the more we walked around the more we started to see its potential. I said to David ‘this place could be good and we need a new challenge’.

“We hadn’t bought a new hotel since The Wild Pheasant three years ago so we decided that this year we are going to ‘do’ the Wynnstay.”

The trials and tribulations of bringing this iconic building up to Mrs Booth’s standards will form the backbone of the new series of Hotel Stephanie.

Filming will continue through the summer until the end of August. “This is certainly going to be a big new challenge for 2010 and each step will be filmed, which adds that little bit more spice to proceedings,” she says.

There are some big plans for the hotel and she and her husband will be making sure everything runs smoothly.

“David and I are going to manage it,” she explains.

“We are going to be there seven days a week and we want to get it up to our standards as soon as possible.

“We take over at 9am on Friday and we will switch to our new menu at 10am. We’re bringing in the head chef from The Wild Pheasant and our division manager for the kitchens will also be coming in.

“Our motto is ‘no more fast food slow, only good food fast’ and from day one we will move to fresh ingredients.

“Because it’s been owned by pub companies for so long, all they were interested in selling was beer. The uptake of food has been low and the accommodation has been diabolical.

“We’re going to spend £1 million on the refurbishment in the first year.

“We have teams of people working shifts covering 24 hours a day and we should have refurbished 60 of the 67 bedrooms in the next 12 weeks.

“People who come in regularly will be able to see the changes straight away. I want it to become more the sort of place where families can come and not feel threatened and where friends can come to share a bottle of wine after work.”

Mrs Booth plans to open a new restaurant downstairs, with food served from 7am in the bar or restaurant. “In the bar, while the beers will change, you will still have your ales, ciders and lagers and we intend to make them cheaper,” she says.

“I like people to be able to come in and enjoy a drink in nice, safe surroundings, but not when they come in to throw it down their neck just to get drunk.

“Apart from the capital investment, I’ll be looking forward to finding out from the people of Wrexham what they want to see from this historic hotel.”

The Wynnstay’s conferencing facilities will also be revamped as will its provision for large parties and weddings.

In the longer term Mrs Booth would also like to see changes around the hotel and the High Street to give the area a cosmopolitan vibe.

“Wrexham has become a typical town that is like a doughnut – there’s everything around the edge and nothing in the middle,” she says.

“There’s five great retail developments but they are all on the edge of town.

“We’ve proposed a lot of things to the council.

“I’d like to see the High Street pedestrianised and have more street entertainment, street cafes.”