IRISH hotel operating group Choice Hotels have taken over management of the Blarney Golf Resort, which was snapped up this year by Northern Ireland-based investor Tommy O’Gorman for c€2.5m, after seeing a c€40 investment in its initial resort and hotel development.

Blarney Golf Resort’s new owner was also the buyer of Co Tipperary’s 1,200 acre Kilcooley estate, the Irish Examiner has learned.

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.

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.

It has to be the Gift of the Grab — Blarney’s Golf Resort and hotel has been bought, sight unseen, just two days after its new owner first heard of its impending sale.