Jack Fagan
A newly formed hotel management consultancy, iNua Hospitality, has bought the Radisson Blu Hotel at Little Island in Cork for €8 million - well short of the €37 million spent on developing it eight years ago.
The 126-bedroom hotel, which made a profit of around €700,000 in 2012, was owned by Cork dentist Rick Fitzgerald, whose Oran Group has been heavily involved in the property industry at home and abroad. Funding for the four-star Cork hotel was provided by AIB.
The Radisson is the fifth Cork hotel to have been sold this year. The Beijing-based Kang family bought the 500-acre Fota Island Estate and hotel for €20 million as well as the flood ravished five-star Kingsley Hotel in the city for €6 million. The Ambassador hotel in the city centre was sold last August to a Dublin investor for €1.5 million while the 126-bedroom River Lee Hotel made €24.5 million.
The Radisson Blu hotel adjoins East Gate Business Park and was built on the nine-acre grounds of Ditchley House, a 19th century mansion which has been incorporated into the facility. The hotel has a leisure centre and spa along with a gym and a 18 m. swimming pool with a paid up membership of about 1,000. Tom Barrett of Savills handled the sale.
Noel Creedon of iNua Hospitality said that the market is currently seeing significant discounts in hotel assets when compared to original development or acquisition costs. This means that hotels could now, for the first time, be purchased on a commercial basis providing attractive yields to investors.
