Eton Group to sell first two hotels

Peter Tyrie, managing director of the Eton Group, has put two of his London hotels on the market.

The 43-bedroom Colonnade hotel in Little Venice and the 49-bedroom Academy hotel in Bloomsbury, which were the first two hotels in the group, are being sold by agent Robert Barry & Co with price tags upward of £10m and £8m respectively.

The properties are both townhouses and no longer fit the group's growing portfolio of boutique hotels, such as the Glasshouse in Edinburgh and Threadneedles in London.

"The thinking has been that we really want to concentrate on doing boutique hotels," said Tyrie, "and, by selling off the Colonnade and the Academy, we can focus on boutiques."

He added that when he started the group in 1998, buying the Colonnade for £3.8m, he intended it to be a collection of townhouse hotels, but that the group had now "moved up a notch" into boutique hotels.

The sale of the two properties will take the number of hotels in the group down to three, although Tyrie said there were still plans to expand the company.

"My ambition is to double the size of the company over the next few years," he said. "We are still keen on London and are also interested in looking abroad."

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 2 - 8 October 2003