Ryan Hotels has made its first move into the British market with the acquisition of the 188-room Charles Dickens Hotel in central London for £16.9 million (€21.5 million).
Ryan plans further hotel acquisitions in major British urban centres serviced by air from Dublin, such as Manchester and Birmingham.
Ryan already operates six hotels in Ireland and three hotels in Brussels, Amsterdam and Hamburg. But the acquisition of the Charles Dickens Hotel - to be renamed the Hyde Park Ryan - is a major strategic move and the group's biggest single investment, increasing its room stock to 1,435. Two weeks ago, Ryan extended its Irish chain to Cork with the acquisition of the city's Metropole Hotel for £7.6 million.
The Charles Dickens has an RAC 4-star rating - equivalent to an Irish 3-star - but Ryan's chief executive, Mr Patrick Coyle, said the aim was to upgrade the hotel at a further cost of £2 million.
The Charles Dickens is at Lancaster Gate, next to Hyde Park, and is less than half a mile from Paddington Station and the express link to Heathrow Airport. It is three-quarters of a mile from Oxford Street and the main shopping district of London.
The hotel is described as a full-service hotel, catering for both the corporate and tourist sectors, although Mr Coyle said that most of its business was tourism-based. He added that the aim was to increase corporate business, building on the Ryan brand and the strength of business traffic from Ireland to London.
"We believe the hotel's prime central London location will appeal to both the corporate and leisure markets. It is envisaged that the Ryan Hotel brand will be a major factor in delivering business to the hotel from the Irish market on a year round basis," said Mr Coyle.
He said he would not be averse to buying another in London, but that Ryan would also look at other major cities like Manchester and Birmingham that had a strong flow of traffic from Ireland.
The purchase of the Charles Dickens for £135,000 a room increases Ryan's core debt/equity ratio from around 29 per cent to 51 per cent, so the group still has the capacity for further acquisitions without straining its balance sheet unduly.
