Jurys Doyle sells three-star Glasgow hotel

Jurys Doyle hotel group has decided to sell its three-star Glasgow property on the open market after failing to attract a satisfactory bid through ongoing private negotiations.

The group's chief executive, Mr Pat McCann, informed the hotel's staff last week about the planned sale and confirmed that he had "engaged agents to dispose of the property".

Selling agent Mr Jeremy Jones, of the London-based firm Christies & Co, said he was looking for €16.3 million for the freehold on the 137-bedroom Jurys Glasgow hotel, which is also known as The Pond and is located 15 minutes from the city's airport.

That's a rate of around €119,000 per room, fractionally below the average €120,000 to €130,000 property experts claim the group achieved on its previous disposals.

Advertisements for the unit will appear in selective industry magazines over the next three weeks "in order to generate as competitive a price as possible" for the property, Mr Jones said. Confirmation of the asset sale will hardly come as a surprise to market analysts or to the group's shareholders, given the management's long-stated commitment to exiting the three-star market in order to concentrate on its high-margin Inns and four and five-star hotels.

But by opting to publicly advertise the property, it's clear the company has failed to win an acceptable bid through its preferred disposal method of private negotiations. To boost expansion into the UK and US market, the group has sold five out of its seven low-margin three-star hotels over the last 18 months, achieving prices far in excess of the assets' valuation rates. However it only announced those disposals after the deals had been completed in private.

According to Mr Jones, Jurys Doyle decided to sell The Pond after opening the new 321-bedroom Glasgow Inn last November, which is now ranked as the largest hotel in Scotland.

Since then, he said, his firm has engaged in a "discreet, covert operation" to sound out interest from various quarters but indicated that none of the offers were acceptable to the group.

He claimed selling hotels on the open market was "usual practice in the UK" and pointed out that the Intercontinental, Jervis and MacDonald chains had all done so in the last number of years. He said: "The market in Ireland is much smaller and more localised than the UK. If you want to maximise your value, then taking the property to the open market is usually the best way to do that. Jurys Doyle is going about this in a tried and tested manner."

So far, a handful of regional hoteliers have expressed interest in The Pond, according to Mr Jones and he said he "remains confident" the group will achieve its desired price for the hotel.