Gleneagles Hotel to be sold

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Diageo is planning to sell Gleneagles Hotel. The company, has appointed Jones Lang LaSalle, and has already said it had ‘numerous expressions of interest’ since last year’s Ryder Cup tournament.

Diageo has owned Gleneagles since 1984, and did try to sell the hotel previously, most recently in 2008, but did not get a buyer. This time round the company is thought to be expecting more than £200m.

The hotel currently has 232 bedrooms and 14 function rooms as well as a Spa and the finishing touches are being put to the Gleneagles Arena, an indoor tennis centre and conference venue, which will be able to accommodate up to 2,000 people. The hotel is also continuing with its ongoing refurbishment programme which will see the upgrade of a further 36 bedrooms.

It last set of accounts, which were filed in March 2014, show that pre-tax profits more than halved to £262k from £591k the previous year. But turnover did increase by more than £2m to nearly £40m.

The news comes following the sale of Glasgow’s only 5-star The Blythswood Square, and The Bonham Hotel in Edinburgh, to Starwood Capital Group, a leading global private investment firm, who also own the Grand Central Hotel. The Radisson Blu on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile was also sold last month (January) for around £59m – making it the largest hotel transaction since in Scotland since 2007.

The news that Gleneagles is up for sale should not come as too big a surprise to the industry as a sale, after the Ryder Cup, had been expected.