Millennuim & Copthorne reports strong world results

Luxury hotel operator Millennium & Copthorne saw a 4.8% fall in revenue per available room (revpar) at its London hotels in the three months to 30 September as a result of the July bombings.

However, London's fall contrasted with the group's otherwise strong results for the third quarter of 2005, which saw a 52% increase in pre-tax profits from £13.2m in 2004 to £20m.

The figure includes £3.3m from the sale of the Bayswater Tower in Sydney, Australia.

The jump in profit was on the back of an 8% rise in group turnover from £136.3m in 2004 to £146.6m in 2005.

Group revpar was up by 4.6% with UK regional revpar increasing by 7.2%. But the strongest performer was New York, which reported a 24.1% rise.

Millennium & Copthorne chairman Kwek Len Beng said: "In the third quarter, the US, New York in particular, and Asia continued to achieve strong growth. An otherwise solid UK performance was tempered by weakness in London following the incidents in July."

By Kerstin Kühn

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