Jurys Hotel Group plans to concentrate on the British market when deciding on future acquisitions, according to managing director, Mr Peter Malone. The group sees little further expansion in the Irish market, and describes plans to move into the European market as "long term".
At yesterday's annual general meeting in Dublin the chairman, Mr Walter Beatty, said "summer bookings are up" and added that the remainder of the year was "extremely positive". The next Jurys to open will be the London Jurys Inn and Mr Beatty told the meeting that rooms will be priced between £65 and £75 per night.
The company says the hotel, which should be open by June of next year, will "benefit from the shortage of hotel rooms in London in the run up to the millennium".
Other cities being "actively looked at" by the company are Manchester and Edinburgh. Jurys already has hotels and inns in Bristol, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast.
Mr Malone said the building of 16 hotels in Dublin this year was of little concern to the company. "We are no longer a Dublin-based company and we are in different markets there anyway, at the top end and in the middle, so we are well spread." Mr Malone said the most "interesting" European markets from the company's point of view were Germany, Holland and Belgium. "They have been going through a bad patch recently so there are opportunities there." The recent strength of the sterling against the pound did not have an adverse affect on Jurys, but had helped "to boost profits" from the company's British interests, said Mr Malone.
He said recent figures from Bord Failte of growth in tourism of between 7 or 8 per cent, reflected the level being experienced by the Jurys group in Ireland.
Mr Malone said the building of a national conference centre would be a significant bonus for the hotel industry. "It needs to be built and as soon as possible, almost every other European State has one."
He added that the best location would be the RDS, which already has the infrastructure in place to accommodate a conference centre.
