Fuller's sells Kent hotel to focus on London
Pub and hotel operator Fuller, Smith & Turner has sold its 34-bedroom Pilgrims Rest hotel and bar in Ashford, Kent, for £2.2m to Shepherd Neame. The group said it wanted to focus its hotel business within its current trading area of Greater London and areas west and north of the capital to Bristol and Birmingham. The sale leaves Fuller's with seven hotels in and around London and in Bristol. It has recently started building work on a £4.5m project to add 55 bedrooms to the Red Lion pub in Hillingdon, west London, which will open next year.
Azure adds one-year contracts worth £5m
Glasgow-based catering company Azure has won three new one-year contracts with a combined annual turnover of £5m. The contracts include two £1.5m-a-year deals to provide hospitality and retail catering services at Nottingham Forest and Stoke City football clubs, both of which start this month.
One of Azure's first duties at Stoke was to deliver catering services to 16,000 fans of pop group Blue when they played at the club's Britannia Stadium last Saturday (12 July).
The company, which employs 300 full-time and 2,000 part-time staff, expects to turn over more than £15m this year and more than £20m in 2004.
Chef graduates to cook at London's RAC club
Graduates of the specialised chefs course run by Bournemouth and Poole College will be preparing a meal on Saturday (19 July) at the Royal Automobile Club in London to celebrate the completion of their course.
The three-year course, supported by the Academy of Culinary Arts and Waitrose, splits the students' training between the college's kitchens and those of leading hotels and restaurants throughout the UK.
The students will be preparing roast fillet of sea bass served with baby fennel followed by noisette of English lamb with a basil mousse, dauphinoise potato and a m‚lange of summer vegetables under the guidance of academy executive chairman Brian Turner.
HBAA launches courses for booking agents
The Hotel Booking Agents Association (HBAA) has launched a range of training programmes designed for agents and hotel companies. The one-day courses focus on commercial relationship issues and examine the "agent-hotel-client triangle". They will be run at sites in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol at a cost of £115 for charter partners and HBAA members, and £145 for non-members. Further details can be found at www.hbaa.org.uk.