NH Hotels sell Barbizon Palace on Sale & Leaseback

Date: January 2018

Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Name: Barbizon Palace Hotel – five star

Seller: NH Hotels, a major global urban hotel operator that operates close to 400 hotels and almost 60,000 rooms in 31 markets across Europe, the Americas and Africa, including city
destinations such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Bogota, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Madrid, Mexico City, and New York.  NH has undergone much change in recent years and one hopes this is now stabilised under the leadership of Ramon Aragones, the current CEO.

The transaction is framed by NH Hotel Group’s “asset rotation strategy” – THPT comment: what does this mean? ….joining the other hotel chains on going asset-light?

As a result, this deal balances NH Hotel Group’s ownership structure in the Netherlands,
where it operates 36 hotels with 6,841 rooms, 56% of which will be operated under lease or management regimes following the transaction.

Buyer: Deka Immoblien, the German asset management company, with 490 properties in 26 countries – 8.9m sq. mtrs of office, retail and hotel space, who recently acquired the W Hotel also in Amsterdam 

DekaBank’s roots date back to the year 1918, when Deutsche Girozentrale (DGZ) was founded. Deka as an investment company was founded in 1956; DGZ and Deka joined forces to create DekaBank in 1999. Other hotel investments include the Radisson Blu in Edinburgh, Sofitel Bayerpost in Munich, InterCity in Hamburg, Hyatt Centric The Loop in Chicago and many others.

No. of Keys: 274 plus large conference facilities (12 rooms spanning 1,000 sq. mtrs) and the one Michelin star Vermeer Restaurant

Price: €155.5m (for 95% of the freehold)

Price per Key: €584,500

First Seen: NH Hotels website