The owner of Kerry's five-star Muckross Park Hotel has just bagged €40m in funding
Noel Creedon’s iNua Hospitality plans to add more properties to its network of seven hotels.
ONE OF IRELAND’S biggest regional hotel groups has bagged €40 million in investment and plans to grow its network of hospitality joints across the country.
The group, iNua Hospitality, was founded by Noel Creedon in 2012. It operates seven hotels and is one wing of the iNua Partnership, which is also the owner of the healthcare investment outfit Ditchley.
Previous backers of Creedon’s group include include Earlsfort Capital Partners and Blackbee Investments. According to the latter, iNua has spent a total of €96.9 million to acquire it current portfolio of four- and five-star hotels.
The hospitality outfit outlined its plans to raise a round of funding earlier this year. According to iNua Hospitality, some 70% of the funding has come from the original base of seed investors.
Earlier this year, the hotel group also noted its plans to consolidate the group under a single entity. The newly formed entity, iNua Hospitality PLC, now owns and operates the seven hotels in the group.
The hotels under its control include Radisson Blu brands in Athlone, Cork and Limerick. It also owns Kilkenny’s Hibernian Hotel, the Hillgrove Hotel in Monaghan and the Muckross Park Hotel in Killarney, formerly owned by Bill Cullen and Jackie Lavin.
Today, the hotel group has also confirmed that it has just added the Radisson Blu Hotel & Spa in Sligo to its portfolio.
In a statement, iNua Hospitality said that it plans to grow its hotel base further over the next four years.
Muckross Park Hotel in Killarney
The consolidated group has 760 rooms in its portfolio of properties and employs over 1,000 staff, which makes iNua Hospitality one of the largest regional hotel groups in Ireland.
The latest set of accounts for iNua Hospitality showed its portfolio of hotels recorded a before-tax profit of €7.1 million last year. Average occupancy at the seven hotels has increased from 60% in 2014 to 73% last year.
The group of seven hotels is currently valued at €90 million. According to iNua, more than €10 million has been invested in hotel improvements to date.
A brochure compiled by Blackbee Investments for potential investors highlighted that iNua has targeted to grow its pre-tax profits to €9.5 million by 2022.
The projected turnover at the group for this year was estimated at €49.3 million and iNua has planned to grow that to €54.4 million over the next four years.
