Ireland’s largest hotel group, Dalata, is interested in adding the Clarion Hotel in Sligo to its portfolio.

TWO key moves this week may put Cork city on the investor and retail radar, as the city centre inches back from the slack years of recession.

AFTER a market revival in 2012 and 2013, 60 Irish hotels sold in 2014 for a total of €440m, double that of the prior year.

ONE by one, Munster’s jewel resort hotels are finding appreciative new owners and investment: now, the stunning, five-star Castlemartyr Resort, in east Cork, may join the changing of the guard of ownership, having been developed at a cost of €70-€80m in the mid-2000s.

A five-star hotel, opened by then-taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 2008, which was developed at a cost of €70m, is now priced for sale at €13m.

The boutique Dawson hotel in Dublin city centre is being put up for sale with a €15m guide price and is likely to attract considerable attention given its prominent location.

The face of the Irish hotel sector has changed significantly over the past number years as international owners and well-known brands have become more prevalent.

Sean Dunne’s one-time dream D4 development will today hit the market minus the much-maligned 37-storey tower originally earmarked to adorn the site.

The resurgent economy and continuing weakness of the euro have helped Dublin’s hotel sector to the top of the pile in terms of activity and room revenues.

Irish hotels are back in business - they’ve sold like hot-cakes during 2014, with over 50 finding new owners, with €450m changing hands in the process.

The €20m sale of Limerick city’s four-star Strand Hotel has gone through to US billionaire John Malone: he adds it to his other Irish hotel investments, such as Dublin’s Hilton Hotel, the Westin and the Trinity City Hotel.

The combined value of hotel sales is set to top €500m this year, and could exceed €1bn depending on certain sales being completed before year-end.

Limerick’s Savoy Hotel, Killarney’s Malton, Kilkenny’s Ormonde Hotel and now Cork’s Metropole Hotel are set to boost the end of year hotel sales tally to about €350 million.

A retired Irish soldier has been asked to testify at the deportation hearing of a Lebanese man accused of executing two Irish peacekeepers more than three decades ago.

NAMA is expected to pick up the pace of Irish hotel sales in the coming 18 months — so far, it has sold just 19 of the 136 in its control, and so has 117 left to sell, a conference organised by the Irish Hotel Federation heard this week.

A trio of top hotels, in Cork City, Killarney, and Kilkenny, is being offered as a rare portfolio sale bundle, for €30m.

Irish hotel sales in 2014 look set to equal the values achieved in 2012 and last year combined.

Recovery in the Irish hotel and hospitality sector is to be analysed, parsed and predicted by Nine Wise Men, overseen by a male Fulbright scholar — with not a single woman speaker on the bill — at an Irish Hotels Federation seminar next week.

HOTEL sales momentum is continuing to gather pace as the year’s first quarter ends, with sales agreed or closed totalling around €10m at Cork’s Oriel House Hotel, in Ballincollig, in Charleville, and in Wexford’s Bunclody, where the Millrace (previously a Carlton hotel), has just been sold by CBRE.

Property consultants, Savills, report that the value of hotel sales in the first quarter of 2014 is 150% higher than this time last year.

THE new owner of Blarney Golf Resort, Tommy O’Gorman, hopes to buy several other Irish hotels, if they offer similar good value and prospects.

A high profile golf resort opened in the dying days of the Celtic Tiger has been bought by a low-key investor from the North two days after he heard about the sale.

The receivership of the five-star Ashford Castle hotel and resort has proved a boon to professionals with over €785,000 paid out in fees over an 18-month period.

More than 180 hotel jobs in Tipperary and Cork have been secured with the sales of two well-known county hotels, The Anner, in Thurles, and the Midleton Park Hotel, in Cork.

A strong local trade, in the heartland of Munster’s Golden Vale, underpins the good trading figures at the Charleville Park Hotel — just released to market.

Money talks, and now — will it talk Blarney? A change of agent sees a renewed ‘value for money’ stress on the Blarney Golf Resort in Cork.

Back in the mid-2000s, a site for an hotel was put to market in Cork’s Ballincollig, with €7m sought for a 100-bed hotel (never built) on 5.5 acres.

The only hotel in Ballincollig, in Cork has been put up for sale as a trading entity by its receivers via Savills, with a €6m price tag.

The zombie hotels dotted across the landscape are beginning to revive or die.

According to the latest Savills Ireland report the upturn in Irish hotel sales that started in 2012 is continuing this year due to improvement in occupancy and average room rate (ARR).

Cork’s Radisson Blu Hotel which was developed at a cost of €37m, is for sale for €8m, with strong trading figures and good profits clocked up over the past three years.

The firm that operated the 5-star Kingsley hotel in Cork — which shut down due to extensive damage caused by the 2009 floods — had accumulated losses totalling €9.3m at the end of 2011.

Our deficit is 15bn per year, every cent of which must be borrowed.

Almost 3,000 dairy farmers who supply milk to food giant Dairygold have been urged not to sign a controversial new milk supply contract.

Ownership of the historic Parknasilla Hotel on the Ring of Kerry was due to change this week, with the overseas buyer behind the €10m-plus purchase, represented in Kenmare by DreamIreland businessman Tony Daly.

BOTH the Parknasilla Hotel and the Cork International Airport Hotel have overseas buyers, the first in legals, the second sold to Phillips Hotels Ltd for approximately €5m. So Savills’ successful run of sales shows it’s not just the Dublin hotel market (where the 500 bed Burlington’s selling for €70 m to the private equity group Blackstone) that’s attracting investors.

BIDS are at an advanced stage and heading towards €20m from European and Asian parties on the Fota Island Resort in Cork harbour this month, as Kerry’s Parknasilla gem joins Fota on the international sales market.

The Ring of Kerry gem-set hotel Parkna-silla, on 500 acres and with 62 lodges and villas, has been put up for sale for €10m.

CORK International Airport Hotel should fly at its €4.75 million asking price, given its quality, location — and trading figures.

Cork’s International Airport Hotel, developed five years ago at a cost of up to €40m, is for sale via a receiver for €4.75m.

Wisconsin’s Scott Walker became the first governor in US history to survive a recall election in a decisive victory that dealt a blow to the labour movement and raised Republican hopes of defeating Barack Obama in the presidential election in November.

THE young woman who died in a Co Cork hotel room earlier this year while on weekend hen party died from acute carbon monoxide poisoning, it was confirmed yesterday.