Banco Santander Puts Hotel Koral up for Auction

6 December 2017 – Levante EMV

Banco Santander has put Hotel Koral, located on the beachfront in Oropesa del Mar, up for auction for €7 million. The establishment has 210 rooms and a swimming pool. The auction is open until 11 December.

The bank took ownership of the property as the result of a debt that it had granted to the previous owners, amounting to €2,127,677. Moreover, the property has another charge over it in the form of an unpaid loan amounting to €700,000 from Cajamar, according to sources close to the operation. The investor that offers the highest bid will acquire the property free of charges. All of the information about the bid is available on the BOE’s auction website.

The electronic auction opened on 21 November. The value of the auction is €7,082,465 and interested parties must pay a deposit of €354,123. According to information provided yesterday on the BOE’s auction website, no bid has yet been formalised for the property.

The building is located on the new promenade in the Tosalet de Oropesa area. The hotel is a ten-minute walk from the centre of Oropesa. The establishment offers 210 rooms with views of the sea or the pool, which is located in a garden area with sun beds and parasols.

The bank has put the property on the market at a time when there is a great deal of investor interest in hotels. Hotel profitability has grown by 32.5% in Valencia due to the strength of international tourism and the recovery in domestic consumption, according to a report by the consultancy firms STR and Magma Hospitality Consulting.

The growth in hotel profitability in the Community of Valencia is much higher than in Madrid (18.6 %), Málaga (15.38 %), Barcelona (14.6%), Marbella (14.5 %) or Sevilla (14.4 %). The strong performance in terms of profitability is being seen despite competition from tourist apartments, which are being marketed through online platforms such as Airbnb.

The barometer from STR and Magma HC is based on data from 145,000 rooms in more than 800 hotels located all over Spain. Data corresponding to the first half of 2017 shows a very positive trend with double-digit growth for the main indicators in key destinations and a general upward trend in terms of average revenues per available room (RevPAR) and in the average price per occupied room.

The good context for divesting has led other banks to follow the same path. Banco Sabadell has just sold its hotel manager HI Partners for €0.63 billion to the US fund Blackstone. That operation included a portfolio of fourteen hotels worth almost €0.7 billion, including the Abba Acteón in València and the Melià Villaitana in Benidorm (…).

Original story: Levante EMV (by Ramón Ferrando)

Translation: Carmel Drake