Friendly hotel cull continues

Friendly Hotels has sold the Comfort Inn in Finchley, London, to Spring Hotels for £2.25m. The sale continues Friendly's ongoing cull of its less-profitable hotels announced last December.

The 51-bedroom Finchley hotel has operating profits of £120,000 from a £28,000 turnover. The current book value is £2.15m. It will still be run under Comfort brandname.

Last week, Friendly sold the 60-bedroom Comfort Inn St Albans to a private buyer for £4.125m. The hotel had operating profits of £400,000 on turnover of £1.1m. The book value is £4m.

The company has now sold four of the 13 hotels it put on the market. The 95-bedroom Quality Mansion hotel in Eastbourne was sold last month for £1.2m to Grand UK Holidays and the Quality Cadogan Hotel in Bournemouth went a week later to a local operator for £1.1m.

Friendly's chief operating officer Peter Cashman said that the remaining hotels were all under offer.

Last December, the group valued the portfolio at £36.4m. It will use the cash to pay off some of its debts.