Jurys Inn to anchor £2 billion IPO prospect

The Jurys Inn hotel group, which comprises more than 30 properties in Ireland and Britain, is to form the centrepiece of a new hotel company that is being lined up for a possible £2 billion flotation.

Amaris Hospitality, which combines 89 hotels acquired by Jurys Inn's owner, Lone Star, under one umbrella will headquartered in Dublin and run by John Brennan, chief executive of the Jurys Inn group.

Mr Brennan will be joined by several colleagues from Jurys Inn, which retains five hotels in the State but is now focused mainly on the UK market. Cormac Ó Tighearnaigh, currently Jurys Inn’s chief financial officer, will also take on that role for Amaris, as well the role of deputy chief executive.

Jury's human resources chief, Jennifer Lee, will take over a similar role at Amaris, while Jury's head of corporate finance, Darren Guy, will be Amaris's group director of finance.

In addition to the 29 Jurys Inn-branded hotels and three Hiltons currently run by Mr Brennan, Amaris will also include 21 Mercure hotels, 19 Thistle hotels in provincial areas of Britain, and 17 properties assembled under the Hotel Collection umbrella.

Some of the Amaris hotels will be rebranded to Jurys Inn under a strategic plan for the group, with Rothschild as an adviser. The overall group will comprise 15,000 hotel rooms and has sales of £450 million.

Lone Star, which bought Jurys Inn for £680 million (€960 million) this year, plans to invest £100 million in the Amaris group, including a new plan for an 80-bedroom expansion of Jurys Inn’s property in Belfast.

Grant Hearn, the chairman of Amaris, said that following implementation of the plan, " in the coming years we expect the business to have a value of over £2 billion". US investor Lone Star is expected to seek an exit once the plan is rolled out and its operations consolidated.

Speaking to the Irish Times on Monday, Mr Brennan said a flotation for Amaris was an obvious possibility, although he stressed it was not the only option open to the group's shareholder for an exit.

“A flotation is certainly one option, given the business’s scale,” said Mr Brennan.

“Lone Star is a financial investor so it will seek an exit at some point. But whatever option is chosen, we will deploy the £100 million and wait to get the benefit of that first. It’s a multi-year plan.”

He said the group was “talking to some other brands” about bringing them on board. Amaris also wants to expand the Jurys Inn brand in Britain.

Mr Brennan said it also “wouldn’t say no” to another hotel in Dublin’s burgeoning market, if one was available at a price that made sense.

Some of the hotels that are not rebranded under one of Amaris’s current trading monikers will be housed separately in the Hotel Collection, under separate management, and will likely be spun out of the group in future.

Most of the group’s top management functions will be housed in its Dublin base, which is currently seeking to beef up its finance team.

Jurys Inn's shareholders prior to the sale to Lone Star included Avestus Capital Partners, which evolved from Quinlan Private.