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The Real Hotel Company plc is planning to dispose of three of its London-based hotels to Whitbread subsidiary Premier Inn Hotels for £18.6 million.

The move to exit its full-service hotels offering in the London market is part of the company’s strategy to focus growth on the premium limited service sector.

The proposed sale of the Comfort Inn Kensington, the Purple Hotel, City of London, and the Quality Hotel Westminster was described by Michael Prager, Real Hotel chief executive, as ‘temporary.’

“We’ve considered very carefully whether exiting the London market and including one of our new purple hotels in the transaction was in our shareholders’ best interests,” he says, “and have come to the conclusion that exiting London for a temporary period at this time allows us to extract maximum value from this transaction while focusing on the regional strengths of the brand.”

Chairman Peter Catesby says the deal will enable the company to realise the long-term value of these businesses more quickly than was anticipated while continuing to develop its new purple hotel brand.

“We have an active development pipeline with more than 2000 rooms under offer and our becoming a largely de-leveraged business will enhance our ability to deliver this plan.”

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