AccorHotels signs five hotels in Yorkshire

AccorHotels has announced it has signed five new hotels in Yorkshire all of which are set to open in Q1 2020. The hotels acquired are the MGallery York, Mercure Leeds Centre, Mercure Kenwood Hall and Mercure Tankersley Manor, all of which will go through extensive renovations ahead of their opening dates, the fifth property - Ibis Budget Sheffield - is a new build property. The five new hotels, which collectively offer 443 new Accor rooms to the region, are to be opened with different management and franchise partners. According to AccorHotels analysis of ONS data, Yorkshire saw 1,274,000 visits from overseas in 2017, with visitors collectively spending 10,619,000 nights in the region driving revenues of £530m. AccorHotels said this was an increase of £52m compared to 2016 and shows the importance of the region for leisure and business travellers from all over the world. Philip Lassman, VP development, AccorHotels UK and Ireland said: “Signing five new hotels in Yorkshire is a great move for AccorHotels. It is a thriving region and we are happy to bolster our presence here. Our franchise and management partners are finding the variety and flexibility of our brands appealing. “The MGallery and Mercure brands in particular are designed to be flexible so they can incorporate local touches into the design and overall guest experience allowing the hotels to offer something truly different without wavering from the internationally recognised and expected standards.” Thomas Dubaere, COO of northern Europe, added: “Yorkshire is a diverse region attracting business and leisure guests who have different requirements, which is why it is so strategically important that we are able to offer a wide range of brands to cater for the differing guest needs from luxury and midscale to economy and budget. “This diversity of brands is important across all our hotels in the UK which by the beginning of 2019 will be 250 in total. In a global economy, hotels increasingly need to attract guests from all over the world, so we are seeing a lot of interest from hotel owners who want to have the power of an internationally-recognised brand and global network behind them.”