The owners of the Crowne Plaza-Dublin Airport Hotel in Santry have unveiled plans for a €30 million investment in a conference centre and sister hotel adjacent to its existing site on the Old Airport Road in north Dublin.
The development is being led by Clontarf Castle Hotel owners Gerry Houlihan and Aidan Crowe, who operate the existing Crowne Plaza site under franchise from the InterContinental group. Mr Houlihan also owns the Long Hall pub on South Great George's Street in central Dublin and the DID chains of electrical goods stores.
Crowne Plaza said in a statement that the hotel and conference investment will lead to the creation of 50 jobs when it is completed in July 2006. Also included in the plan is a proposal for a 13-storey car park.
The new sister hotel will be at three-star level, with 114 rooms, trading under the Express by Holiday Inn brand. The existing Crowne Plaza hotel has 204 rooms at four-star level.
The two-storey conference centre will comprise 30,000 square feet, bringing the capacity of its existing conference facility to 750 delegates from 240. The centre will have 27 meeting rooms.
"With our new conference and event centre and the additional accommodation facilities available through our new sister hotel, we hope the Crowne Plaza will have one of the strongest positions on Dublin's - and even Ireland's - conference map," said Crowne Plaza managing director Enda O'Meara.
The Crowne Plaza is run by a company called Tifco Ltd, whose financial performance is difficult to assess as it files only abridged accounts. The latest filing, for the period to October 31st 2004, shows that it had cash of €5.28 million in the bank. The abridged balance sheet showed that there was a deficit of €464,310 in the profit and loss account. A year earlier, the company had €1.26 million in the account.
The most recent accounts for the Clontarf Castle Hotel show that its profits slumped by almost 41 per cent to €335,174 in the year to last November from €565,789 the previous year.
The accounts for DID, one of the best known indigenous brands in retailing, indicate that its pretax profits grew marginally to €2.29 million in the year to last December from €2.24 million.
