Tifco Hotel Group secures €11m from sale of Crowne Plaza Dundalk

The Tifco Hotel Group has secured about €11 million from the sale of the Crowne Plaza Dundalk to East Coast Catering Ireland Ltd.

The Crowne Plaza Dundalk briefly comprises 129 guest bedrooms and suites along with nine meeting rooms, conference facilities, a gym, a rooftop restaurant on its 13th floor, a bar/restaurant and coffee bar at ground-floor level, and a 160-space surface car park. The hotel benefits from strong corporate demand thanks to its location just off the M1 motorway and proximity to Dundalk town centre, Finnabair Business & Technology Park, Xerox Technology Park, and the newly developed plant of Chinese pharmaceutical giant, WuXi Biologics. It also benefits from Dundalk’s popularity as a tourist and leisure destination and its proximity to the Cooley peninsula.

The sale of the Crowne Plaza was handled by John Hughes of CBRE’s hotel division. Hughes declined to comment on the transaction or price achieved when contacted by The Irish Times.

The hotel’s new owner, East Coast Catering, is led by Dundalk-born, Canada-based businessman Patrick O’Callaghan, with local engineer Denis Williams serving as managing director of its business here. While the company has primarily been associated in Ireland with the accommodation of asylum seekers owing to its involvement over the years in the operation of facilities including Balseskin reception centre near Dublin Airport and Hatch Hall in Dublin city centre, it has interests in the hotel sector too.

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The Crowne Plaza is East Coast Catering’s second hotel acquisition in Dundalk in recent years. In 2015 the company paid about €2.5 million for the former Fairways Hotel. Having secured ownership of the property, East Coast redeveloped the site into a neighbourhood scheme comprising a supermarket, coffee shop and pharmacy along with 48 apartments and the new 113-bedroom four-star Fairways Hotel. The hotel is managed by iNua as part of its iNua Collection.

East Coast’s Canadian business is focused on the provision of catering and accommodation to remote sites for the oil and gas, marine, mining, and industrial construction sectors. According to its website, East Coast Catering “serves the majority of offshore production/drilling installations and mine sites in Canada’s East Coast region”, and provides accommodations for over 5,500 people, serving close to 26,000 meals every day.

News of Tifco’s sale of the Crowne Plaza Dundalk comes just over one month on from the opening for business of the hotel group’s Travelodge Plus on Townsend Street in Dublin city centre. While the 393-bedroom hotel was to have opened for business in January of last year, that plan was put on hold when Tifco signed a contract with the State to use the property to accommodate people seeking asylum in Ireland.

Following its sale of the Crowne Plaza Dundalk, Tifco’s Irish portfolio now comprises 11 Travelodge hotels, the Crowne Plaza Dublin Airport, Crowne Plaza Blanchardstown, Hard Rock Dublin, the Holiday Inn Express Hotel at Dublin Airport, and the private label hotel Arthaus Hotel Dublin.

Tifco also manages partner hotels the Clontarf Castle Hotel, Hilton Dublin Kilmainham, The Hendrick Dublin Smithfield, Kinsale Hotel & Spa, Hotel Killarney, Innisfallen Hotel Killarney, and the Clybaun Hotel Galway. It is one of the largest hotel groups in Ireland, with almost 3,000 bedrooms and almost 1,500 employees.