Rooms for growth

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.

Bringing up the rear, but the biggest of them all in Munster, is the Fota Resort in Cork harbour, with Colliers and Cohalan Downing, which is making €17 to 18m, and, again, the buyer seems to be from beyond these shores.

Latest into the prestige hotel-sales fray this month is Co Mayo’s five-star Ashford Castle, with 83 bedrooms and 365 acres. Savills’ agent, Tom Barrett, expects overseas interest for the trophy buy, previously sold in 2007 for €50m to local developer Gerry Barrett, who’d planned a modest extension to the castle, and 30 residential lodges in the grounds by Lough Corrib, at Cong.