Airport hotel on market for €4.75m
The 145-bed hotel at the airport campus is one of three Irish hotels taken over from developer Bernard McNamara, who has reported debts of €1.5bn, and who owes €200m to Bank of Scotland/Lloyds Banking Group.
Co Clare-born Mr McNamara was one of the country’s highest profile casualties of the property dive, and his hotel investments alone included the Shelbourne and the Conrad in Dublin; he built Galway’s Radisson Blu hotel; and was involved in ownership of the Tara Towers, Mercer and Montrose hotels, while investing heavily in holiday home development at Kerry’s Parknasilla Hotel.
In February, the banks appointed receivers Grant Thornton to the Burlington Hotel (bought in 2007 by Mr McNamara for €288m), to Parknasilla and to the Cork International Airport Hotel, and all three have continued to trade since, employing about 180 people.
Picking up on the aviation theme, design and decor at the International Airport Hotel in Cork integrates aircraft Pullman seating and memorabilia, with a funky injection of features by Austrian architect Henrik Frichgesell — it’s not your standard box hotel, and even the shape outside was designed to resemble an aircraft when seen from the air.
Selling agents for the Cork hotel, which is the first of the three controlled by Bernard McNamara to be publicly offered for sale, are Denis O’Donoghue and Tom Barrett of Savills, who say it has been managed by Tifco Hotels since 2009 and “the hotel trade is not impacted by the sale”.
It is trading profitably, the sellers add, and is in walk-in condition.
It is one of two hotels at Cork airport, where the smaller of the two is an 80-bed Radisson.
Apart from air passengers and guests, there is a hotel and function/meeting room business from the 7,000 jobs based at the adjacent Cork Airport Business Park.
The Cork International Airport Hotel has 145 bedrooms, function facilities for 320 with 10 meeting rooms, and a basement which has not yet been developed.
