Harbour Hotels snaps up two Cornish hotels in Fowey and Padstow

31 July 2018 by Janet Harmer

Harbour Hotels has acquired two hotels in the Cornish seaside resorts of Fowey and Padstow out of the administration of Richardson Hotels.

The 37-bedroom Fowey Hotel and 58-bedroom Metropole hotel in Padstow have been bought for an undisclosed sum in excess of the recommended guide price of £5.5m and £10m respectively.

The hotels previously belonged to the family-owned Richardson Hotels group until January when administrators from RSM Restructuring Advisory were appointed as the result of an unpaid tax bill.

The addition of the two hotels to the Harbour Hotels portfolio will take the south of England-based group up to 13 hotels and two country event venues. Two other hotels are under development in Salcombe and Torquay.

Mike Warren, managing director of Harbour Hotels, said: "We are very excited to be taking the Harbour brand further into Cornwall. Both Fowey and Padstow are popular, well-known locations making the hotels great acquisitions for us.

"We have previously had great success delivering destination bar and restaurant brands throughout our portfolio. We have no doubt that the same design-led ethos will prove extremely popular with both local and visitors to these iconic coastal towns."

Harbour Hotels, owned by the Nicolas James Group, will now undertake an extensive refurbishment of the Fowey and Metropole hotels, which will see the introduction of its HarSPA and Jetty restaurant brands to the properties. The two hotels will officially join the Harbour brand once the work is completed during 2019.

Ed Jefferson of property company Colliers International, which marketed the hotels, said the properties are both "unique landmark venues in premium locations" with "excellent" development potential.

"They are a perfect addition to the Harbour Hotels group, which is renowned for its collection of prestigious hotels in prime sites in coastal, country and city locations around the south of England.

"We experienced unprecedented demand for these assets from around the world, from a variety of interested parties. The region is now very much on the map for top-level hoteliers and as a result of this process we are looking for alternative acquisitions for a number of under bidders."

As the result of the sale of the hotels, a spokesperson for RSM Restructuring Advisory said that they were now "in a position to start returning funds to creditors shortly".

Two other Richardson hotels - the 71-bedroom Falmouth hotel in Falmouth and the 132-bedroom Grand hotel in Torquay - which were put on the market at the same like as the Fowey and Metropole hotels have now been withdrawn from sale and continue to trade within the Richardson Hotels portfolio, alongside John Burton-Race in Torquay and the Royal Beacon in Exmouth.

The RSM Restructuring Advisory spokesperson added: "The sale should enable the joint administrators to achieve the statutory purpose of rescuing the companies as going concerns and hand back management of the companies to the director/shareholder in due course."

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