Weston hotelier sells up in face of declining business

A West Country hotel which has been in the same family for 80 years is being sold for conversion to flats because of changes in tourism demands.

Tony Chapman, immediate past president of the Weston-super-Mare Hoteliers Association, is selling the 42-bedroom Rozel hotel in the Avon resort town after winning planning permission for a change of use to residential accommodation.

He said: "We have experienced a gradual decline in the past 10 to 15 years in our price range, the middle market, with competition from foreign holidays and budget hotels. Coach groups are forever driving down prices, too.

"We have fixed costs but are still charging the same as we were 10 years ago. It's the changing face of tourism. The market has changed but you cannot always adapt your property to meet the needs of those changes."

The family has run the hotel since it opened in 1921, but Chapman says a developer wants to turn it into luxury flats. He intends to stay in the trade and hopes to open "an upmarket B&B not too far away from here".