Administrators secure buyer for luxury North Yorkshire resort
A LUXURY hotel on the North Yorkshire coast has been bought from administrators.
Richard Jackson’s Harrogate-based property business Yorkshire Ventures has acquired the exclusive leisure destination Raithwaite Estate from administrators KPMG with the backing of York-based secured pension lender, Grosvenor Financial Consultants.
The deal, the sum of which has not been disclosed, sees the firm acquire the 80-bedroom, luxury hotel, spa and restaurant, along with 100 acres of the estate and seven luxury cottages at Sandsend, near Whitby.
York-based Skelwith Leisure (Raithwaite) Limited, part of the larger Skelwith Group, appointed joint administrators on July 22 last year.
Mr Jackson said: “This property is a Yorkshire gem in a fantastic coastal location. It has been renovated to an incredibly high standard, and that’s why the hotel business has a good foundation and such enormous potential.
“The opportunity remains to develop a further 46 cottages, which already have current planning consent, and we are all ready to finish the site to the same five-star luxury standard as the hotel,” he added.
The new development at the site will start in March, and the work will create 50 jobs, with local construction firms and suppliers winning the majority of the new tenders and contracts.
Yorkshire Ventures has appointed hospitality management company Inn-telligence to run the hotel. The team is headed by Penny Brown and Meinhard Huck, both previously senior executives with Raffles Hotels and Swissotels, of which Mr Huck was president.
Inn-telligence has worked on a range of high profile luxury hotel management projects including Sir John Madejski’s Royal Palm Hotel in Galapagos.
Ms Brown said: “Raithwaite Estate is a stunning property with enormous potential to increase its range of services and facilities and to attract more visitors to Whitby.”
Inn-telligence and Yorkshire Ventures have announced plans to become part of Preferred Hotels & Resorts under their Lifestyle brand. This would see Raithwaite Estate join a string of other well known names under the Preferred banner, including The Scotsman in Edinburgh, and The Wellesley and The ME by Melia in London.
The deal received the backing of Mark Pepper’s York-based Grosvenor Financial Consultants, which held the ownership of the land and assets.
“This is a good deal and ensures that a great development and a profitable luxury resort has a really bright future. The acquisition ensures the value of the site, against which the loans were secured, is safeguarded,” said Mr Pepper.
The lender called in administrators from KPMG last year to ensure the future of the business and to protect its clients’ investment.
Parent company the Skelwith Group had further traumas last year, as its Flaxby Hotel development was caught in a legal battle over land usage.
Original plans for the £100m development, intended to be a hotel and golf resort, were changed by the Skelwith Group to include 2,500 homes in a village development.
Family farmers the Armstrongs who sold the land for the 303-room Flaxby Country Club were less than amenable to this change of plan, as Skelwith was still to pay the full £7m sale price for the land, having reportedly paid just £3.5m for the site so far.
Ben Slack, Lindsay Texel and Helen Bates of Clarion acted for Yorkshire Ventures.
