Hotel des Clos on market for £1.1m

Nottingham's Hotel des Clos, home of the Michelin-starred Restaurant Sat Bains, is for sale for £1.1m.

Daniel Ralley, owner of the nine-bedroom hotel and restaurant, declined to explain his reasons for selling, confirming simply that the directors and shareholders of the hotel, which include Bains, had "decided to sell the property".

Bains, chef-director of the hotel's 35-seat restaurant, who has worked there for four years, put his name above the door at the end of last year. The change brought success soon afterwards when, at the start of this year, the restaurant was promoted to one Michelin star.

Bains said: "We've had a fantastic four years, a meteoric rise, some would say, and it's been a fantastic learning experience for me. But now I'm ready to put my own balls on the line."

He said he planned to open a restaurant "in the same vein" as Restaurant Sat Bains "with some serious design features".

He added: "There's a brilliant client base in Nottingham and Derby, so they're the two regions I'm looking at. I've got potential staff lined up who I've worked with over the past 10 years and I've got a brilliant front-of-house manageress with fantastic knowledge waiting in the wings."

Three years ago disaster hit Hotel des Clos when the adjacent River Trent burst its banks. The property was flooded and the damage ran into a six-figure sum. It was closed for five months, reopening in April 2001.

Ralley, who bought the property with help from his parents in 1999, had just finished refurbishing it when it was flooded. When the hotel reopened, however, it received several new awards, including three AA rosettes and promotion to the top 200 hotels listed in the AA Hotel Guide.

The hotel recorded a turnover of more than £410,000 excluding VAT last year and is on course to increase that to £495,000 this year.

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 20 - 26 November 2003