Jurys Doyle hotel group has told shareholders that the improved trading in the second half of 2003 had continued into this year with its UK and US hotels putting in a particularly strong performance.

Speaking at its annual general meeting in Dublin yesterday, the hotel group's chairman, Mr Richard Hooper, indicated that its Jurys Inn offering was contributing most growth with no evident pick-up in trading at its four and five-star hotels. Mr Hooper said this was constraining its overall performance.

Its Jurys Inns in the UK have expanded into Newcastle, Glasgow, Leeds and Chelsea. In the coming months, the group will open a new four star hotel in Boston and its new Jurys Inn in Dublin's Parnell Street will open in August. The new hotels will add 673 bedrooms to its Jurys Inns portfolio and 225 bedrooms to its Jurys Doyle hotel porfolio.

"Given the encouraging trends being experienced in our hotel operations in the UK and US and in our Jurys Inns division, I remain, in the absence of any external setbacks, cautiously optimistic about the business outlook for the group in terms of underlying profit growth in 2004," he said.

During 2003 it sold a hotel in Limerick which yielded a couple of hundred thousand euro, according to the chairman. He said the group would continue to expand but the Limerick hotel had been too small for its portfolio.

One shareholder questioned the board's proposal to revise its share option scheme for executives which would alter the terms under which they can exercise their options. The hotel group intends to make its case to the Irish Association of Investment Managers in the near term.