Castle Venlaw Hotel up for sale

David O'Leary • Published 13 Aug 2010 09:30 0 Comments

CASTLE Venlaw Hotel has been put on the market after its owner, PAG Hotels, went into administration.

The baronial style 12-bedroom hotel, on the outskirts of Peebles, is inviting offers in excess of £795,000, while the 25-bedroom Auchen Castle hotel, located in 28 acres of land with a private loch near Moffat, is being marketed for more than £1.25m.

Over 30 jobs now hang in the balance after KPMG placed PAG Hotels in administration on June 29 after being called in by the Santander bank.

Both hotels remain open and are being offered for sale as fully operational businesses.

Alistair Letham, a director with the selling agents Colliers International, said: “They both trade at good levels of turnover and there is an opportunity for new owners to re-establish the businesses back to the levels of profitability that were previously enjoyed.”

David Nimmo, joint administrator and head of restructuring for KPMG in Scotland, said: “Both hotels will continue to trade as normal while a buyer is sought, and the intention is that existing bookings will be honoured.

"There are currently 30 employees across the two hotels and the intention is to continue to trade the business with these employees retaining their jobs. A small number of redundancies were made following appointment and no further redundancies are anticipated.”

Auchen Castle Hotel was bought by Pierre-Alban Guy, who is the founder of PAG Hotels in August 2008 for £3m and was previously owned by Ann Skinner-Ter Smitte who ran and developed the business over the past seven years with her silent partner Cory Ter Smitte.

Previous guests of the hotel include the Beatles, Barbara Cartland and Chris de Burgh. Castle Venlaw Hotel was first opened in 1949 by Alexander Cumming and his wife, Jean.

On Alexander’s death in 1972, his son, Alistair, took over his father’s share of the business and operated the hotel with his mother and his wife, Janet.

The hotel was later sold to John and Shirley Sloggie, in 1997, who renamed it Castle Venlaw Hotel and the property changed hands once more in September 2007 when bought by PAG Hotels.

Tweet

This article appeared in Peeblesshire News 13 Aug 10

Post a comment

Your Comment:

Registered users log in here

Username or email

Password

If you are registered with us, you can login here. If you are not registered, do so now.
Once logged in you wont have to complete word verification each time you post.

Prefer not to register?

Screen Name *required

Email (not displayed) *required

Usernames must be 4 - 20 characters. Registration only takes a few minutes. Registered users can also take part in competitions and other features of the site.

Word Verification:
Enter the text as shown.

Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our News archives.

Follow @peeblesnews