European Investor to Acquire Dublin’s Conrad Hotel for €118m

Main Photo: Lemuel’s Bar at the Conrad Hotel, Dublin

Location: Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin, Ireland

Name: The Conrad Dublin

No. of Keys: 192

Seller: Joint owners Park Hotels, Aviva and local investor the Cashel Fund. The property underwent a EUR13m refurbishment two years ago.

The Conrad Dublin, as it is now known, is currently 47.8% owned by both Hilton Worldwide (through their Park Hotels & Resorts Group unit) and the Cashel Fund, a regulated investment fund based in Dublin. Life and pensions group Aviva owns the remainder of the shares. The interests of all three parties will be sold as part of the deal now under negotiation.

Buyer: Archer Hotel Capital is finalising the €118m purchase of the Conrad hotel in Dublin, Ireland. The European investor is in exclusive talks with a deal expected to conclude in weeks, reports the Irish Times.

News of the Conrad’s sale comes just four months after it was offered by CBRE’s hotel division to investors in a targeted process at a guide price of €115 million.

The Conrad’s prospective purchaser, Archer Hotel Capital is a specialist European hotel investment vehicle jointly owned by affiliates of the Dutch fund manager, APG Asset Management, and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC.

The hotel properties owned by Archer Hotel Capital B.V. include Hotel Arts Barcelona (a Ritz-Carlton hotel), Westin Palace Madrid, Marriott Brussels, Sheraton Berlin Grand Hotel Esplanade, Sheraton Stockholm, Renaissance Paris La Defense, Renaissance Paris Vendome, Marriott Rive-Gauche Hotel & Conference Center, Le Méridien Piccadilly London, Hilton Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and Renaissance Amsterdam, with a gross asset value of €2 billion and revenues of nearly €400 million.

Outside of their partnership in Archer Hotel Capital, APG and GIC have already made a number of Irish investments in their own right.

APG, for its part, is in a joint venture with US real-estate firm Hines to bring a total of 3,000 new homes to the rental market in Dublin and the Greater Dublin Area in the coming years. The first phase of the estimated €1.1 billion investment will see 1,269 Build-to-Rent apartments being delivered as part of the new town centre now under construction at Cherrywood in south Dublin.

GIC meanwhile amassed a 20.6 per cent stake in Eir prior to its takeover in a €3.5 billion deal last year by companies controlled by the French billionaire, Xavier Niel.

The sale of the Conrad Hotel comes just two years on from a €13 million programme of refurbishment by its current owners, which saw all 192 of its guest rooms redesigned, and its presidential suite transformed. A new lounge bar, Lemuel’s, and an all-day brasserie, The Coburg, were also added.

Price: €118m

Price per Key: €614,583

THPT Comment: A hefty price, which reflects Dublin’s scarcity of new hotel properties

First Seen: The Irish Times

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