Dalata adds to UK roster amid fresh Brexit warning
The Dalata Hotel Group expects its 2017 earnings to be in line with market forecasts and said it is upbeat regarding its trading outlook for 2018, buoyed by a strong UK development pipeline.
The group, which owns the Clayton and Maldron hotel chains, has agreed to lease a new yet-to-be-built Maldron Hotel in central Glasgow.
That brings to five the number of UK hotels Dalata has in the planning stages, including another in Glasgow under the Clayton brand.
However, the opening of a Maldron hotel in Newcastle has been postponed from late 2018 to February 2019.
Dalata described trading in the final four months of this year as being “as expected” and said full-year earnings will meet analyst targets, namely somewhere between €102m and €104m.
In the first 11 months of this year, revenue per available room at Dalata’s Dublin hotels was up by 9.5%, with an 8.7% growth rate evident in its Irish hotels outside of the capital.
Lower growth was seen in the group’s hotels in the UK and the North, but that joint region was still the best performing with a 10.4% revenue rise.
Dalata is set to face more competition in Ireland and the UK on the back of Swedish group Pandox and Israel’s Fattal Hotels buying Jurys Inn for €908m with an eye on expansion.
Meanwhile, despite 75% of Irish hotels and guesthouses reporting a rise in visitor numbers this year, only 9% are seeing an increase in visitors from Britain. This has prompted the Irish Hotels Federation to call for more targeted marketing support for regional tourism.
“The continued fallout from Brexit and the slowdown in visitor growth are worrying as they have a significant regional bias,” said federation president Joe Dolan.
