Thistle Hotels - History

History

It was set up by Scottish & Newcastle in 1965, to combine its own traditional legacy hotels with purpose built hotels. Mount Charlotte Investments bought thirty four Thistle hotels from S&N, and acquired the Thistle brand name for £645m in November 1989. Debt acquired from the transaction surrogated Mount Charlotte Investments with no choice but to be taken over by Brierley Investments of New Zealand for £664m in 1990.

In 1997, the company floated on the Stock Exchange, to become Thistle Hotels plc, valued at £620m. In September 1998, it sold 30 provincial hotels to Grace Hotels (owned by the Lehman Brothers investment bank) for £62.7m, becoming managed by Peel Hotels. In July 1999, it sold the Charles Dickens Hotel in London to the Ryan Hotel Group for £20m. In June 2002, it initially sold 37 of its hotels to Orb Estates of Jersey for £598m, continuing to manage the properties, but the hotels are eventually sold to Atlantic Hotels for £700m and being operated under the Thistle name. In June 2003, the company was bought for £627m by BIL International, a private equity company based in Singapore owned by the Hong Leong Group and the majority shareholder since 1990. BIL is actually, for accountancy purposes, registered in Bermuda. Thistle Hotels was delisted from the London Stock Exchange. In 2004, it opened its Cumberland Hotel in London after a £95 million renovation, which operated under the Guoman deluxe brand. In May 2005, it sold six hotels to the Topland Group under a leaseback deal for £185m.

It used to be based on The Calls in Leeds, then moved to Uxbridge.

In 2004, budget hotel company Travelodge bought two Thistle Hotels in London.

Thistle Hotels is currently undergoing a re-branding of £100 million in order to maintain consistency across the group.

Thistle Cardiff the Parc has now re-opened after being closed for 17 months due to fire and has been refurbished throughout

From 1993 until 1996 Thistle Hotels sponsored Leeds United.