Hotelier couple to raffle £1m hotel

A hotelier couple in Essex plan to "give away" their £1m hotel in a raffle, with tickets costing £1,000 each.

Gordon and Blossom Hoyles have been running the 14-bedroom Hotel Continental (www.hotelcontinentalharwich.co.uk) in Dovercourt for 18 years but have decided to raffle the property rather than selling. They estimate that selling it by conventional means could take up to two years.

Gordon Hoyles, 78, told the Daily Mirror: "One morning I woke up at 3.30am, went to the bar and said to our night porter I would raffle the hotel.

"I started to look into it and found we could do it as a prize draw. We got a solicitor and started putting it together.

"Blossom and I think it's time for a change. I haven't got that much time to spare and I don't want to be arguing over conveyancing trifles at 80 plus.

"Going might be a bit traumatic - a bit painful, but having decided to go we want to go quickly. It seems a good thing to give the winner an instant, exciting, life-changing, lucky day."

The hotel, which overlooks Dovercourt Bay, has a bar, 24-cover restaurant and a terrace garden. It featured on Channel 4 show Four in a Bed two years ago and surprised guests with its "unique and deliberately different" decor, including one room decorated like a ship's cabin, with a stained glass porthole window.