That's suite, Sugar

Sir Alan Sugar is buying £35m luxury hotel for £2.5m

By Dominic Herbert, 26/07/2009

SIR Alan Sugar has shown his Apprentices he's the master - by snapping up a £35million five-star hotel for just £2.5million.

The TV star tycoon, who last week became a Lord, struck the mega-sweet deal after the owners went bust in the recession.

It means he'll pay just an astonishing 7 PER CENT of what it was valued at.

His new acquisition, the Hotel Byblos on the Costa de Sol, Spain, is a favourite with celebs.

Princess Diana, JK Rowling, the Rolling Stones and Radio 2's Chris Evans have all stayed there.

Pool

A source said: "Lord Sugar is delighted to have acquired this hotel. This really is a belting deal for his empire.

"He may now be a peer and TV star but he will always remain an entrepreneur at heart."

The hotel is located in Mijas in the mountains, a couple of miles inland from the popular tourist resort Fuengirola.

It has 96 double rooms and 48 suites, which all have balconies overlooking the mountains and gardens, and cost up to £370 a night.

There are also three restaurants, tennis courts, a spa centre and swimming pool - and guests can play golf on the two courses either side of the complex. Its website boasts: "Being a perfect venue for a relaxing family holiday, this hotel is a place where everyone gets pampered."

It goes on: "This luxury hotel reflects the perfect harmony of its Moorish and Western style architecture, the beauty of its Andalusian patios, the sound of water always present, exquisite cuisine."

Owners Aifos - once the biggest construction company on the Costa del Sol - spent £34 million on refurbishing the palatial hotel just four years ago. But the firm has gone bust, losing £91.1 million in the last 12 months and leaving 2,000 shareholders in the lurch.

The hotel was put up for auction - and one of Lord Sugar companies, Amsprop Spain, made a killing with its winning bid of £2.58 million.

That is just one-fourteenth of the hotel's value. Sugar resigned from the company when he received his peerage and took up his government seat last Tuesday. It is now being run by his son Daniel, who said yesterday: "I can confirm that Amsprop Espana, a subsidiary of Amshold Limited, has reached an agreement with the courts of Fuengirola regarding three plots of land in Mijas.

"The legal procedural process is not due to be completed until the start of September.

"We have no further comment."

Before the auction Amsprop Spain put down a £6.8 million deposit, two-thirds of which will be refunded when the auction process is completed.

The acquisition has given hope to the hotel's 114 staff who feared they would lose their jobs when their employer went bust.

Jose Garcia, head of the hotel's management company, described Lord Sugar's intervention as "a ray of hope". And Lola Villabla, spokesman for the tourist arm of the powerful Workers Commissions trade union said the sale was "the light at the end of the tunnel".

Crisis

Spanish construction companies have been hard-hit by the recession, with property prices slumping by 11 to 20 per cent. It's not uncommon for banks to sell of property at a fraction of its value in a bid to cut their losses.

In the UK, Lord Alan has been appointed enterprise tzar to help the government steer the country through the economic crisis.

The Hackney-born entrepreneur is worth an estimated £730 million, having made his fortune from his Amstrad computer company.

But he is most famous for his BBC1 hit series The Apprentice, where he puts young hopefuls through their paces before giving the winner a £100,000-a-year job with one of his firms.

Your comments

This article has 5 comments

Sir Alan has bought the hotel with a mortgage of 20 million pounds still in place, a workforce he can't fire and a serious refurbishment, estimated to cost another 7 million pounds, well overdue. It was (over)valued at the auction at being worth around 34 million pounds - try half of that as a real value. The Byblos was THE hotel on the Costa Del Sol - but that was a long time ago. I hope he knows what he's doing....looks like he's been getting some very bad advice!

By Bede. Posted July 29 2009 at 11:40 AM.

Yea why not? I did it when a house in my street was repossessed and I got it for 90 grand when it had been on the market for 185 grand!!!!

Sir Alan knows what he is doing!!!

By jamie luck. Posted July 26 2009 at 8:28 PM.

I am Spanish but I live in the UK and let me tell you, I was born in Mijas and that particular hotel is just a block of concrete, my nun lives next door and believe me, it does not cost 35million, I don't think it will be even 1 million anyway! So Sir Sugar has been conned really, it has a history of cockroaches, it is too far from the beach and everywhere else and the hotel is not really nice inside. About famous people going there, I never heard of anyone famous, let alone Princess Diana and the likes, lol! that's surely a joke, I feel sorry for Surallan! pah!

By lolo. Posted July 26 2009 at 12:47 PM.

i stayed there 3 weeks ago and believe me it is no 5 star hotel and there is no way £34 million has been spent on it in recent years. sugar will have to dig deep in his pockets to bring it up to a 5 star hotel

By david. Posted July 26 2009 at 8:15 AM.

yes easily done at a time of recession if you have a few milions to spare

By millie. Posted July 26 2009 at 12:46 AM.

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