Award-winning Lancashire hotel enters administration

A hotel voted as one of the best in Lancashire last year has called in administrators to oversee finding the business a new owner.

The Best Western Plus Samlesbury Hotel, located near Preston, has appointed joint administrators from Manchester firm Duff and Phelps to advise on next steps. The hotel’s current owners are reportedly keen to find a new buyer, with business continuing as much as possible in the meantime.

The news came as shock to those in the area as the hotel had just been shortlisted in the Hotel of the Year category in the 2018 Lancashire Business Awards – an award it won in 2017.

The company said that uncertainty resulting from Brexit and the pressures of paying the national living wage at a time when inflation was rising put a great deal of financial strain on the business.

Joint administrator Matthew Ingram said that these pressures had come to bare on the leisure industry as a whole, meaning that many firms in the sector “are facing a bumpy road ahead”.

He added: “Consumer confidence is the driving force of the sector and, as such, its health is dependent on economic certainty.”

Parent company Squire Hotels owns other prestigious hotels around the North of England, including the Windermere Hydro in the Lake District and the Etrop Grange Hotel near Manchester Airport.

Squire bought what was then called the Swallow Hotel in 2013 before spending £1 million on renovating it. It then was brought under the Best Western Plus brand – the UK’s largest collection of independently owned or family-run hotels - in order to raise its profile on a local level.

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