Goldman Sachs puts 19 QMH hotels up for sale
11/06/2007
19 UK hotels belonging to former hotel business Queens Moat Houses are to be put up for sale by Goldman Sachs, parent company of owner Whitehall Funds. The hotels, now mostly operating under Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza franchises, are expected to fetch between £450 and £500m. With 3,000 rooms between them, just three retain the Moat House Brand, located in Stoke-on-Trent, Gatwick and Reading. Estimated underlying earnings of £35m- £40m are largely attributed to conference and banqueting business. Queens Moat Houses was acquired by Whitehall Funds for £544m in 2004, at a time when it had a portfolio of 80 hotels in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands and debts of £670m, a legacy of its high profile collapse in 1993. Nine UK hotels have since been sold earning Whitehall around £100m. The upcoming sale is part of a wider hotel asset disposal, with Whitehall also looking to sell French hotel business Alliance Hospitality for around £450m.
