PEEL Hotels has acquired two hotels, in Leeds and Newcastle, for just under £9m.
The company, set up by former Thistle chief executive Robert Peel in November 1998, has bought the Golden Lion Hotel in Leeds for £4.75m and paid £4m for the Caledonian Hotel in Newcastle.
It already owns The Bull in Peterborough and The Midland Hotel in Bradford. Peel also manages 27 hotels around the UK for Lehman Bank. It is currently carrying out a major £600,000 revamp of The Midland and says it plans to spend its money on improving the quality of its four hotels before it makes any further purchases.
“We are a small company and we are concentrating on quality rather than great expansion at the moment,” said a Peel spokesman. “We want to invest in staff and the products we now have in place.”