Blackstone sells DoubleTree by Hilton, Tower of London for over £300m

Date: December 2016

Location: London, UK – Tower of London

Name: DoubleTree by Hilton, Tower of London – five star

No. of keys: 583

Seller: Blackstone

Buyer: The Bhatia family

Price: £300m

Price per key: £514,580

THPT Comment: Great buy for Mrs Bhatia and her family, expanding her relationship with Hilton. She already owns the 419-bedroom Hilton Paddington and 298-bedroom Hilton Waldorf hotels in London. One of the largest single hotel transactions of 2016.

Blackstone has reduced its investment in the hotel sector having sold former Mint hotels in Glasgow, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester to Marathon Asset Management last year for around £160m.

They bought the whole Mint portfolio (8 hotels) for £600m in September 2011, founded by David Orr and his father Sandy, and Donald Macdonald (of Macdonald Hotels) in 1995, who was forced into selling the business after building up debt of £417m, largely stemming from the development of this property at the Tower of London and a 553-bedroom hotel in Amsterdam, under the banner of City Inns.

In October 2016, Blackstone announced that it will be selling a 25% stake in Hilton Worldwide for £5.3bn to the Chinese HNA Group, reducing its equity in the global hotel group to 21%.

First seen: The Caterer