UK: Frogmore and C1 Capital have bought three UK hotels for a combined £152 million.
The partners have acquired the Hilton London Olympia for £130 million, the Park Inn by Radisson Northampton for £15 million and Stifford Hall near Thurrock for £7.2 million as part of a newly formed joint venture to pursue a hotel recovery portfolio strategy.
These acquisitions form the second tranche of acquisitions for its fourth value add fund, FREP IV. Previously Frogmore acquired interests in Galliard Homes and three of their London residential developments for FREP IV.
With a combined total of 643 keys across the three hotels, Frogmore and its partners have committed around £70 million equity to the projects. Each hotel will be repositioned and rebranded or extended to maximise potential.
“Our strategy is to source hotels which are under performing or in need of capital expenditure in order to revitalise the offering and improve the hotel performance,” said Jo Allen, chief executive at Frogmore. “We’ve worked alongside Gerard and his colleagues at C1 Capital for nearly 20 years and are delighted to be partnering with them on this initiative.”
Gerard Nolan, chairman of C1 Capital said: “Our long-term partnership creates the perfect union of Frogmore’s development skills and their ability to gain planning consent with our operational skills to improve the assets. As a team we’ll continue to identify hotel assets that can be repositioned and/or redeveloped.”
“Several aspects attracted us to the Hilton London Olympia,” added Nolan. “Occupying a prominent location on Kensington High Street, the 405-bedroom hotel is also adjacent to Olympia, which is currently undergoing a £1.3 billion redevelopment expected to attract an extra £9 million per year to the local economy.”
The Park Inn Hotel in Northampton and the Stifford Hall hotel in Thurrock are select service hotels with conference and wedding offerings at affordable price points.