UK properties may be first in InterContinental sell-off strategy
InterContinental Hotels Group has put three of its UK hotels up for sale, with a combined price of almost £70m, and is understood to be preparing to offload several more.
The group has put the 303-bedroom Crowne Plaza Midland hotel in Manchester, the 195-bedroom George InterContinental in Edinburgh and the 221-bedroom Holiday Inn in Crawley, West Sussex, on the market, with price tags of around £30m, £25m and £13m respectively.
A spokeswoman for InterContinental would not confirm that the group was preparing to hoist "for sale" signs over as many as 20 of its UK hotels, but did admit that it was talking to agents about a number of smaller hotels.
She added that the sales were part of InterContinental's ongoing asset review, following its demerger from Six Continents last year. "We need to see if we can create more value by selling our assets rather than holding on to them," she said.
InterContinental operates 3,400 hotels around the world, but owns just 170 of them.
It is understood that the group will sell off the majority of its owned hotels over the next few years and will retain just one hotel in each of its key cities around the world.
