Major Cheshire Hotel & Golf Course Joins the Legacy Portfolio

Date: December 2017

Location: Weston, near Crewe, Cheshire, UK

Name: Wychwood Park Hotel & Golf Course, four star

No. of Keys: 108, 18 hole European PGA Tour-standard golf course, set in 200 acres of land

Seller: The Principal Hotel Co. (Starwood Capital) – a group bought together by the acquisition of Principal Hayley, De Vere Venues & Four Pillars in 2013/14.

Buyer: Mokan Hotels, owned by three Bahrain-based investors, who have appointed Legacy Hotels & Resorts to manage. This is the second hotel to be secured by Mokan from the Principal Hotel Company this year, after acquiring the 110-bedroom New Place hotel in Southampton in March. New Place is also managed by Legacy.

Legacy, headed up by the very able Andy Townsend, has secured four new hotel projects in the last eight weeks including the acquisition of Crabwall Hotel & Spa for £6.45m, also in Cheshire; a 200 bedroom hotel development project in central Reading, Berkshire; and the management of the Hilton Garden Inn at the Stadium of Light, Sunderland. It now manages a total of 18 hotels in the UK and one in Spain.

Price: £8m

Price per Key: £74,074

THPT Comment: The fulfills Starwood Capital’s Principal Hotels plan to divest itself of some the lesser properties acquired from De Vere…odd though having sold 20 non-core hotels and invested £250m in a serious upgrade or the remaining hotels, they took on UBS in November 2017 to advise on strategic options for the remaining hotels, including the due-to-reopen in 2018, The Principal London (formerly the THF Hotel Russell), which includes an option to sell for £1.2bn…strange how these very large real estate companies work!

First Seen: The Caterer