The niece of renowned hotelier Sir Rocco Forte, most people would think Ms Polizzi knew all that matters when it comes to the successful running of a hotel.
But the hosts at the 600-year-old Rose and Crown have been left distinctly underwhelmed by Ms Polizzi's advice during nearly two weeks of filming for channel Five's reality series The Hotel Inspector.
The weekly show features the forthright Ms Polizzi expounding to struggling hoteliers the length and breadth of the country exactly what it is they need to do to revive the fortunes of their business.
Co-owner ex-antiques dealer Jonathan Davies, who runs the 30-bedroom hotel in Market Place with former nurse Jacquie Noot, said: "My advice to any hotelier is simply don't get involved with this programme.
"If viewers see me looking irritable and angry then that's because I was.
"I hated the way the TV crew came in and for two weeks just treated the hotel as if it was a film set and expected staff to drop everything just to help them out.
"I was so angry that on the second day of filming I just went off."
He said: "Alex Polizzi praised the standard of our food, service and our rooms and could only talk about what she said was clutter – but some of that was created by the film crew themselves. The rest was our own items which we had put into 'junk' rooms.
"She recommended that we convert a boardroom into a coffee lounge, which they then painted battleship grey. They also put in a modern frontage at the entrance. But most of my guest are aged 50 plus and prefer the older part of the hotel.
Mr Davies added: "Since the TV crew left in June we have not seen any increase in trade. We are just where we were before The Hotel Inspector arrived."
According to the programme, the Rose and Crown, which the couple bought four years ago, is in crisis and faced a bleak future unable to attract a host of visitors.
Mr Davies said: "The hotel is not in crisis. We are doing OK.
"We are very ambitious to expand and attract more leisure tourist guests. But this is a difficult area which doesn't really attract many tourists and the majority of our guests are representatives of local food firms."
He said the programme makers had approached the hotel to get involved and after repeated e-mails and letters asking if they wanted to take part, Mr Davies and his partner reluctantly agreed.
Mr Davies said: "They were only interested in good television. They promised the earth, including lots of advice from accountancy to design but we got nothing of this at all."
Ms Noot said: "We told the team we would have a think about it after they first approached us, but in the end we decided we had nothing to lose and we thought it would be interesting to hear what advice Alex had for us."
Viewers can find out what happens and hear Alex's reaction when she sees the hotel by tuning into Five on Monday from 9pm.
The programme makers were unavailable for comment at time of going to press.
Factfile: Alex Polizzi
- In January 2008, Alex Polizzi takes over from Ruth Watson as host of The Hotel Inspector.
- Alex is the proprietor of the Hotel Endsleigh in Devon.
- Her mother , the hotel designer Olga Polizzi is the sister of Sir Rocco Forte.
- Before taking over Endsleigh, Alex and Olga had already launched the highly praised Hotel Tresanton at St Mawes, in Cornwall.
- She read English at Oxford, trained at the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong and worked for top chef Marco Pierre White at the Criterion.
- Her father , Count Alessandro Polizzi, an Italian marquess, died in a racing car accident in 1980, when she was a child.
