The Sales Season is Upon Us...

What appear to becoming an annual Winter Sale period has once again began in Scottish Hospitality. The process which seemed to start all those years ago with the insane financing of the purchase of what became Swallow Hotels has continued to send waves through Scottish Tourism long after the initial tsunami.
There seems to be a continula changing hands of properties at this time of the year and yet again the administrators and agents re-enter and take back more properties.

Last week it was announced that called in the administrators because of a sharp decline in trading, the group, set up in 2004, by the former managing director of Corus Hotels and Martyn Levitt, the former finance director of Firmdale Hotels, ran 36 hotels including The Oban Caledonian, The Ballachulish and The Isles of Glencoe.
Folio, which leases its hotels, had been in discussions with its landlords over a rent holiday to allow it to continue trading. However, a decision by the owner of nine hotels – believed to be the Landesberg and Rosenberg families, who also own Admiral Taverns – to pull out of negotiations is said to have prompted the move to appoint MCR.
News then followed that Akkeron Group has created a regional hotel group with the acquisition of the Folio hotel business.
Akkeron Hotels is owned by Brent and Colin Johnston, who heads a group of companies under the name Clear and owns the freehold of four of the hotels let to Folio.
Folio had built a chain of 36 hotels before the recession struck before collapsing a year ago and was bought out of administration in January, having retained 19 leasehold hotels.

The eight leasehold hotels include the three Scottish properties. The remaining 11 hotels in the Folio group not acquired by Akkeron, due to considerably higher rental costs, have been handed back to their respective owners.
Akkeron intends to build a portfolio of up to 150 regional hotels across the UK. These will comprise a mix of ownership, leases and management contracts.