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UK: The 50-room Grey Street Hotel, a boutique property in Newcastle’s city centre, has called in the administrators.
The grade-II listed four-star property has appointed Graham Newton and Paul James Bates from BDO to run the business with a view to achieving a sale as a going concern. All current bookings are being honoured and no redundancies are currently planned.
Graham Newton, BDO business restructuring partner, said: “Unfortunately the economic climate and difficult trading conditions have adversely affected the hotel. The hotel will continue to trade whilst all opportunities are explored. It is business as usual for the Grey Street Hotel – all room and venue bookings will carry on as planned. Customers seeking further information should contact the hotel manager.”
Ken Ellington, joint chair of the North East Hotels Association, said of the Newcastle hotel market: “We’ve probably seen 1,018 rooms open in the past eight to 12 months, and that will have undoubtedly affected the occupancy figures because there are far more rooms to fill. Clearly, there was the demand when hotel groups would have been putting the figures together for construction in isolation, not realising other hotel companies were also looking to open. We are very saddened from a commercial point of view. The hotel community has grown significantly in volume in the last year, but the market has struggled to accommodate that. I suspect some key decisions were made to build a raft of new hotels in the city several years ago before the economy went into recession. It’s a lovely, boutique property, and as a hotel community, we wouldn’t wish this kind of news on anybody.”
www.greystreethotel.com
