Will overseas buyers come for Eccles Hotel with €5m price tag?

Two of the bigger deals in the broader Wild Atlantic Way locale have seen a US-based Irish buyer come forward for the 46-bed niche Park Hotel in Kerry's Kenmare entrepreneur  Bryan Meehan, who also bought the Dromgarriff Estate with woodland and luxury holiday homes in Glengarriff in a multi-million euro purchase.

And, near Skibbereen, US buyers also emerged to buy the equally niche upmarket Liss Ard Estate on 163 acres in 2021, for a reported c €3.5 million, with reports last year its owners were looking to add further to their Irish interests.

Might they, or those associated with this internationally mobile wealthy elite come  forward for a trophy such as the Eccles Hotel, gone to market this week with a €5 million price tag cited by agent John Hughes of CBRE.

The Eccles is among the longest established hotels in Munster, with hospitality roots on the site facing the waters of Bantry Bay and Garinish Island in scenic Glengarriff going back to the 1700s.

The current hotel, with its ornate cast iron canopy and veranda,   dates to the 1830s, built by Lord Bantry and leased to the Eccles family who later bought it and owned it for over a century.

Other owners have included  Italian businessman Renato Fogliana in the 1970s, local O’Keeffe and Murphy families, the Hanratty family from Dublin who owned and sold on a Howth hotel around 2000 for development. the Hanrattys invested a reported €8m in their purchase and upgrades at the Eccles, then with 66 bedrooms.

Later and current owners are hoteliers Ray Byrne (who also bought Cork city hotel sites since) and Eoin Doyle, taking it on in 2019 and now selling up via CBRE.

Among those who've stayed at Eccles Hotel in the past were George Bernard Shaw stayed in 1910/11, said to have written extensively while in West Cork;  William Butler Yeats was a regular visitor to the Eccles Hotel in the 1920s, and in 2017 UK 'celeb' Pippa Middleton, sister of the Duchess of Cambridge, stayed while attending a wedding in Glengarriff.

The four-star Eccles Hotel & Spa now has 59 refurbished bedrooms, wedding/conference and banqueting facilities and a spa with three treatment rooms.

Investment in the period era building c 90kms from Cork city (remodeled by Arthur Hill in 1901, with feature internal cast iron columns and Jacobean-style fireplaces) has been ongoing, with scope to add additional bedrooms, says CBRE.

Agent John Hughes comments: "the sale of the Eccles Hotel offers a superb opportunity to acquire one of Ireland's oldest hotels,  located in popular West Cork and is ideally located on the increasingly popular Wild Atlantic Way tourist route.

"The hotel has been sympathetically refurbished to create a hotel of character and offers a purchaser the ability to further grow this long established business."

DETAILS: cbre.ie