The Singaporean owners of two of Ireland’s most luxurious resorts, Castlemartyr in Co Cork and Sheen Falls in Co Kerry, have paid between €15 million and €20 million for Prem Group’s Tulfarris Hotel & Golf resort in Co Wicklow, part of a plan to build a portfolio of prestigious Irish hotels.
Dr Stanley Quek, who studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin, and Peng Loh, an Irish-born hotelier, completed the deal shortly before Christmas and are expected to significantly upgrade the four-star establishment, which slipped into the red last year, according to the most recent accounts for the business.
Jones Lang LaSalle acted as selling agents on the property but declined to comment on the sale.
In September, following the acquisition of Ring of Kerry golf course, Quek said that he and Loh intended to expand their interests and were focused on resorts near Dublin and on the west coast.
The Singaporean investors also own the Trinity Townhouse in Dublin and Library Street restaurant, led by Kevin Burke, the former head chef of Michelin-starred The Ninth London.
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Prem Group, the Dublin-based hotel operator behind the Premier Suites brand of serviced apartments, bought Tulfarris in 2016 for €8 million. The 220-acre resort, a popular wedding and conference venue with a restored 18th-century manor house and championship golf course, was once owned by a consortium of investors headed by the developer Paddy Kelly.
The investors paid close to €18 million for it in 2003 and later lavished a reported €60 million transforming the estate into a family-orientated resort. In 2009, less than a month before the hotel was due to reopen after major refurbishments, Kelly and his partners lost control of the business as Anglo Irish Bank appointed a receiver to recover loans of €25 million.
In common with the entire hotel sector, Tulfarris was badly hit by the pandemic. The latest accounts for the hotel’s operating company, Kennack Ltd, show the business made a loss after tax of €1.5 million for the year to the end of December 2021.
Tulfarris reopened its doors in June last year and, according to the accounts, “international guests” have returned while “domestic trade has been robust”.
During the pandemic Prem Group made use of state support measures that allowed it to claim €1.6 million in government grants for Tulfarris in 2021 and nearly €700,000 in 2020.
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Prem Group, which owns, leases and manages 32 properties in Ireland, Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, is now controlled by the US alternative asset manager Fortress Investment Group, which snapped up a majority stake in the organisation at the end of last year.
Accounts for its parent company, Raydara Holdings DAC, show that at the end of 2020 Prem Group wrote off €19 million in intercompany loans to the entities that control Tulfarris Hotel & Golf Resort, the four-star Osprey Hotel in Naas and Cahernane House Hotel in Killarney, Co Kerry.
Accounts for those hotels show that the Osprey made an after-tax loss of €477,951 in 2021 compared to a net profit of €4.5 million in 2020, while Cahernane House fell into the red to the tune of €281,090 in 2021, overturning a profit from the year before of €695,960.
Prem Group claimed €1.9 million in government grants for Osprey in 2021 and €795,660 in 2020.
For Cahernane House, state support measures totalled €521,798 in 2021 and €223, 682 in 2020.
