City hotel latest Swallow victim

GREENS Hotel in Edinburgh's West End became the latest victim of the Swallow Hotels collapse yesterday, closing with the loss of 34 jobs.

One of 13 hotels and pubs across the UK that was still being run by Swallow Group administrators Ernst & Young, the three-star Eglinton Crescent establishment had been operating since it was converted from four Georgian town houses in 1919. Swallow bought the hotel from the North British Trust Group in 2005 as part of a package of 20 hotels in a deal believed to be worth around 75 million.

One of the largest privately-owned hotel and pub groups in the UK, the hugely acquisitive Swallow Group went into receivership last September. The group owned 671 sites across Britain, employing 7,300 staff. The portfolio included around 70 hotels and 120 tenanted and managed pubs across Scotland, many of them acquired in the past two years. Around 600 have been sold since.

A spokeswoman for Ernst & Young said negotiations with a potential buyer for Greens had failed, forcing the closure. Administrators are operating seven hotels and pubs in Scotland, including in Edinburgh, Gretna, St Andrews and Nairn, and were in negotiations with buyers for all of them.

In October, The Scotsman revealed company accounts that showed, through a system of selling the freehold on the properties in return for inflated leases, the company had lost 36.7m in the ten months to 30 June, more than 120,000 a day.

Meanwhile the Moffat House Hotel has been bought for an undisclosed sum by Glen Wright, owner of the Dryfesdale Country House Hotel.