Activities

The Dublin-based group owns and operates hotels in the three-star budget-plus, four-star and five-star brackets in Ireland, the UK and the USA. The hotels are found in central locations in major cities and the majority are company owned.

The company’s name originates from the merger of Ireland’s oldest hotel group (Jurys Hotels) with its largest privately-owned hotel company (Doyle Hotel Group) in 1999.

The group has two key brands:

• Jurys Inn: three-star budget-plus hotels
• Jurys:  three- to five-star hotels

A handful of four- and five-star hotels are individually named.

Timeline

• 1893: The Jurys family starts up Jurys Hotels in Dublin.
• 1964: Doyle Hotel Group is founded by Pascal Vincent Doyle.
• 1986: Jurys Hotels becomes a public company.
• 1993: Jurys Hotels, which now numbers five hotels, launches its fast-growing budget brand, Jurys Inn.
• May 1999: Jurys Doyle is born when Jurys Hotels buys the Doyle Hotel Group, Ireland’s largest privately owned hotel company, for £166m. The addition of Doyle’s 11 properties in Ireland, London and Washington DC creates a group with 29 hotels.
• May 2005: Jurys Doyle rejects two takeover approaches by Precinct Investments that valued the group at €15.25 and then €16.25 per share.
• June 2005: The group puts its Ballsbridge site in Dublin on the market for an estimated €200m (£134m). The site includes the Jurys Ballsbridge hotel, the Berkeley Court Apartments and The Towers.
• July 2005: Property developer Sean Dunne bids €260m (£193m) for the 4.85 acre Ballsbridge site. The sale completes in October but Jurys Doyle will continue to run the two hotels until late 2007. Precinct makes two further offers – of €16.50 and then €17.50 per share. 
• August 2005: Precinct abandons its takeover plans despite securing a new backer for its provisional €1.1b (£750m) offer. However, Irish investment group Quinlan Private and Choice Hotels Ireland both admit they are considering making bids. Jurys Doyle puts two more Dublin hotels on the market - the five-star Berkeley Court and the three-star Montrose hotel.
• September 2005: Private equity firm Aldergate Investments (which backed Precinct’s offers) and Sean Dunne (in concert with DTC Construction Services) both express an interest in making an offer for the group.
• October 2005: A consortium of members of the Doyle family and two company directors table an offer of €1.25b (£858m) or €18.90 (£13) per share through JDH Acquisitions in a bid to take the company private again 
• November 2005: Dunne makes a successful bid of €119m (£81m) for the Berkeley Court hotel, which attracts seven offers. The deal completes in January 2006.
• December 2004: JDH Acquisitions, acting for members of the Doyle family, reveals that it has won control of 98.9% of the company’s shares.
• January 2006: Jurys Doyle delists from the London and Irish stock exchanges to return to private ownership.
  

Financial snapshot

Full year
Group turnover: €284.5m (2003: €253.8m)  
Group pre-tax profit: €45.5m (2003: €45.8m) 

Half year
Group turnover: €150m (2004: €135m)
Group pre-tax profit: €23.7m* (2004: €21.9m) 
* before non-recurring items

Full year-end: 31 December 2004
Half year-end: 30 June 2005

Operating data

Turnover in the half-year to 30 June 2005 by country
Ireland: € 58.9m  (2004: €59.8m)
UK: €72.7m (2004: €62.6m)
USA: €€19.3m (2004: €12.6m)

Operating profit in the half-year to 30 June 2005 by country
Ireland: €4.2m (2004: €10.9m)
UK: €17.9m (2004: €19.2m)
USA: €5.4m (2004: €4.5m)

Number of hotels: 36 (14 in Ireland, 19 in the UK and four in the USA)

Number of employees: about 4,500 worldwide

Payroll as a percentage of turnover: 30%

Jurys Inn (19 hotels, three-star budget-plus)
Ireland: Cork, Dublin (3), Galway, Limerick
UK: Belfast, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Croydon, Heathrow, Leeds, London (two), Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Southampton,

Jurys three-star hotels (3)
Ireland: Dublin (Montrose)
UK: Glasgow
USA: Washington DC

Jurys four-star hotels (10)
Ireland: Dublin (two - the Burlington and Croke Park), Cork (autumn 2006)
UK: London (3), Bristol, Cardiff
USA: Boston, Washington

Jurys five-star hotels (4)
Ireland: Dublin (The Westbury, Jurys Ballsbridge, The Towers*, Berkeley Court*)
*The group continues to manage The Towers and Berkeley Court hotel following their sale in 2005 to property developer Sean Dunne.

The Washington DC hotels operate as  Jurys Normandy Inn and Courtyard by Marriott North West

Strategy

"Trading in the combined Jurys Hotels division in the UK and the United States and across the combined Jurys Inns division in Ireland and the UK continues to be satisfactory.

However, the trading performance across our 4-star Dublin hotel portfolio continues to be below our expectations. We have previously stated that the Group required an escalation in the business build-up in some of our recent hotel openings. While we have been experiencing some improvements in business build-up at these hotels they are not yet performing at expected levels.”

Source: half-year results, 6 September 2005 

Chief executive

Patrick McCann

Key directors

Chairman: Richard Hooper
Marketing and sales director: Niall Geoghegan
Finance director: Paul MacQuillan

Contact

114-146 Pembroke Road
Ballsbridge
Dublin
4

Tel: 00 353 1 607 0070
Fax: 00 353 1 667 2370

E-mail:
Website: www.jurysdoyle.com

Commentary

Since its aggressive expansion in the 1990s, Jurys Doyle has been regarded as a very strong player with plenty of potential for growth. In April 2004, it raised £52m to fund further expansion, which will be driven largely by its Jurys Inn budget brand. This brand has proved exceptionally resilient during tough trading conditions, and currently generates 33% of the company’s turnover and 43% of its profits.

In recent years, the company has sold off most of its three-star Jurys hotels to focus on the budget, four-star and five-star markets.

The sale in February 2004 of the four-star, 95-bedroom Jurys Limerick hotel also underlined the group’s intention to concentrate on larger properties with 200 or more bedrooms.

While the majority of its hotels are company-owned, future growth will see a combination of owned and leased properties. Most of the openings in recent years have been new-builds and this trend is likely to continue.

Although Jurys Doyle had claimed to have no plans to follow the move of its provincial peers (such as Macdonald Hotels, Jarvis and Hanover International) into private ownership,  the issue came to a head in late 2005 after Precinct Investment's unsolicited approaches sparked a takeover frenzy. The Doyle family members regained control of the company's shares and took it back into private ownership in early 2006.

The group plans to open a new Jurys Inn in Milton Keynes in 2006 and another three (in Plymouth, Brighton and Liverpool) in 2007. In the autumn of 2006, the Jurys Cork hotel will reopen following its demolition and reconstruction as a leased four-star, 182-bedroom property.