Amano expands London footprint with £20m Covent Garden hotel acquisition

German hotel group Amano is expanding its London presence by buying a Victorian neo-classical office block around the corner from its current Covent Garden hotel.

Amano’s £20m purchase of nine-storey, 25,000 sq ft 41 Kingsway will see it convert the property into a 70-bedroom boutique hotel in the heart of London’s Theatreland. 

The new site, which is located 50 yards from Amano’s sole current London outpost in Covent Garden, has been vacant for the past decade. The hotel group said it will also open a new ground-floor food retail store. 

The deal was struck by Manex Properties, a joint venture between Berlin-headquartered Amano and financier Robert Stafler’s London investment firm Excellion Capital, and was financed entirely by equity. 

Amano owns 15 hotels across Europe, and said it will encourage guests to flit between its two sites’ rooftop bars, restaurants, event spaces and coffee shops. 

The two hotels will be operated by a single management team, “thus achieving streamlined operations, efficiencies and synergies”, the company said.  

Manex previously converted its Drury House property, acquired in 2018, from an office to a 141-room hotel, which it said “consistently achieved occupancy levels well above 90%.”

Amano’s co-chief executive Philip Rokeach said: “The market’s response [to the group’s first London hotel in Covent Garden] has been so positive that acquiring Waterman House now feels like a natural next step. 

“This is the right time to expand our presence here and we are delighted to deepen our commitment to London. We look forward to making further investments and to growing our London brand.”