Singapore-based hospitality group CDL Hospitality Trusts has acquired Hotel Indigo Exeter via a pair of London-based subsidiaries, CDL HBT Investments III Property and CDL HBT Investments III Retail, for a purchase price of £19.4 million.
The sale includes both the hotel building’s High Street-facing ground floor retail units, currently tenanted by Holland & Barrett and Mountain Warehouse, which are valued at £4 million separately.
The 104-bed hotel fully opened twelve months ago in the converted House of Fraser department store. It includes spa and gym facilities as well as a restaurant and two bars and is described by its new owner as an “upscale lifestyle boutique hotel”.
CDL Hospitality Trusts is part of an asset management business which owns 18 hotels in seven countries, as well as a shopping centre and a build-to-rent block in Manchester.
It is controlled by subsidiaries of Singapore-based Millennium & Copthorne Hotels, a hospitality and asset management group with 125 hotels in 22 countries.
Hotel Indigo’s previous owner, IHG, has approved a franchising agreement for the hotel to continue to operate with its existing branding.
Its new owner says it has identified opportunities to “potentially drive better performance” from the business, citing a “limited new supply of rooms within the city centre for the next few years” as well as “leisure travellers from visiting parents and guests during university graduation months”.
The sale of the hotel was announced one week after Frasers Group, which previously operated the 65,000 square feet building as a department store, announced its purchase of adjacent Princesshay shopping centre.
The House of Fraser department store closed four years ago next month.
Local wealth management firm Prydis announced its purchase of the building in February 2020, in a deal facilitated by Lambert Smith Hampton. Freehold vendors DTZ Investors said it had been sold for £9.5 million.
Its subsequent refurbishment as a hotel reportedly cost £40 million. It has been on sale with an asking price in excess of £24 million since April.
CORRECTION – 30 October 2024
The penultimate paragraph of this story originally included the sentence: “The department store closed four years ago next month and was sold to local wealth management firm Prydis for an undisclosed sum.”
Following a complaint the sentence was instead terminated at the end of its first clause to correct the impression that the connective “and” suggested that the second clause followed in temporal sequence, which was not the intended meaning.
The article draft had initially connected the two clauses with “after” but was changed during editing to preclude the possibility that the building’s sale might be construed as the cause of the department store’s closure, inadvertently overlooking the temporal sequence alteration.
The complainant also said that the story was incorrect to say that the building was sold to Prydis four years ago. This statement relied on several sources, including Prydis itself, which announced its purchase of the building in February 2020, and Lambert Smith Hampton, which promoted its involvement in Prydis’ purchase of the building at the same time.
On review, additional sources were also identified, including a trade press report, and freehold vendor DTZ Investors, which announced its sale of the building to Prydis and also stated the purchase price.
The second clause of the original sentence has been extended to make these details clear.
