South African investment firm acquires Lake District Country House hotel in £3.75m deal

A Lake District Country House hotel has been sold from an asking price of £3.75m by the specialist hotels team at real estate advisors Colliers International.

Borrowdale Gates Hotel features 33 en-suite bedrooms and 13 staff bedrooms in a building converted from a mid-19th century private home, which is set in gardens and grounds with views along Borrowdale.

Acting on behalf of private owners Colin and Joy Harrison, Colliers sold the hotel to Fairtree Hospitality Real Estate Private Equity Fund, the Guernsey investment vehicle managed by international asset management company Fairtree Capital.

This acquisition marks Fairtree’s third investment in the UK hospitality market.

The Fairtree Fund already owns two hotels in Cornwall - The Old Quay House and The Rosevine.

Providence Hospitality, a UK-wide hospitality management company, has secured contracts to manage all the properties owned by Fairtree in addition to its presence in South Africa.

Joe Bester, director of Providence Hospitality, said: “Providence prides itself on the highest quality of customer care, and we are keen to maintain our reputation in these new locations.”

Julian Troup, head of UK hotels agency at Colliers International, secured the sale to Fairtree.

Julian said: “The acquisition of Borrowdale Gates Hotel, a genuinely outstanding example of a country house hotel in the Lake District, by Fairtree, is a further example of an international buyer securing a prime provincial hotel.

“We are witnessing an increasing flow of such deals, particularly involving buyers from the Far East and Asia, because the devaluation of sterling following the EU Referendum means such transactions are now 20 per cent less expensive than a year ago, thereby making the UK hospitality market a very attractive prospect for buyers overseas.”

Julian said about 10% of UK hotels sold by Colliers International in 2016 were acquired by international buyers.

Cumbria is the most productive county for the hotels’ team at Colliers with 18 hotel and hospitality sales in the past 12 months, he added.