Local buyers secure Killarney’s historic International Hotel in major Kerry deal
KILLARNEY’S town centre International Hotel, a four-star historic hotel has been sold for €22m, in what marks a 50 year loop of coincidence in the Kerry town. The 98 bed high-end hotel owned by the Coyne family has just found a very local buyer, the O’Donoghue Ring family, bringing to five the number of Kerry hotels now owned by that powerful family, with four to date alone in Killarney, as well as other hotels in the UK as well as owning Munster Joinery. In a neat sense of revolving doors, the O’Donoghue Ring Collection of hotels started day one, with a deal struck with the late Killarney auctioneer and businessman, Sean Coyne, back in 1976. The highly-regarded International Hotel was sold this week by Sean Coyne’s family: when they themselves bought it back in 1976, Sean Coyne decided to concentrate on his new buy: he sold the hotel’s adjacent staff house, East Avenue House to the O’Donoghue Ring family, who had just started the now-monster windows and doors company Munster Joinery in 1973. Today, Munster Joinery employs over 1,800 in Ireland and hundreds more in their UK factory. The 1976 East Avenue sell-on by the Coynes also marked the start of Kerry’s O’Donoghue Ring Collection, now totalling about 500 hotel beds in Ireland’s busiest tourism town: East Avenue House was turned into a hotel in 1978, and the O’Donoghue Rings went on to develop what’s now Killarney Plaza Hotel & Spa, the Killarney Avenue Hotel, the Killarney Towers Hotel and the River Island Hotel in Castleisland. On Thursday, The International Hotel has joined that fold. It started with a deal struck in 1976 by the late Sean Coyne and Donie Ring, whose respective families ran hotels for 50 years, into next generation ownership. Half a century on, those men’s wives, Mrs Frankie Coyne and Mrs Noreen Ring, have just signed the papers to conclude a sale of the International, put at €22m by the International Hotel’s GM Tracy Coyne, one of four sisters who became directors of the 98-bed town central hotel by Killarney House, the International. Despite the hotel sale getting national and international inquiries – including local but largely baseless rumours of Trump Hotel International hovering for a second Irish swoop - the Killarney prize wasn’t going to be allowed leave local ownership. Apart from the fistful of five strong hotel brands, and associated restaurants, bars and function facilities, the O’Donoghue Ring family also own Munster Joinery at Ballydesmond on the Kerry-Cork border, and one of Europe’s largest manufacturers of windows and doors, with massive plants on the Cork-Kerry border and in the UK. Their new hotel purchase, the International Hotel has hospitality roots going back to the Victorian mid-1800s heyday of Killarney tourism, with the current building dating to 1906 and with its bedrooms tally brought to 98 by the addition of a Celtic Tiger times rear wing with 21 more bedrooms.International Hotel Killarney bought by O'Donoghue Ring family for €22 million via agents CBREIt went to the open market in September and a sale has now taken place within a swift four months, via agents John Hughes and Paul Collins of CBRE Hotels who had launched it with a €18m -€20 million price guide. Key to the strong sale was the central Killarney setting, and local pedigree which now continues, in different Kerry clan hands. CBRE selling agent John Hughes said the hotel offer had sparked interest from near and far, with locals to the fore. Vendors the Coyne family said the sale “marks a dignified and fitting conclusion to Coyne hospitality, and the legacy built on continuous reinvestment, care for staff, and a lifelong commitment by Sean Coyne to the International Hotel and to Killarney. For the O’Donoghue Ring family, it represents both an expansion and a homecoming the acquisition of the hotel that, in some way, started it all.”The family added “we are really delighted to be handing the reins to Donie and his family group and are confident that as the International Hotel enters its next chapter, there is a real sense of continuity and tradition. Its future is now in the hands of the O’Donoghue Ring family who understand not only the business of hospitality, but the heart of it too.” It’s the strongest sale locally for some time, with CBRE noting back in September it was almost decade since a substantial Killarney hotel came up for public sale: that was the Nama-promoted sale in 2014 of the far bigger 172-bed Malton Hotel (formerly the Great Southern) to the Scally family, owners of Cork’s Hayfield Manor, for €15m. The International Hotel’s new owners the O’Donoghue Ring family had plans in the early 2000s for a Cork city centre hotel on Cornmarket Street (the Guy & Co building) but switched to 80 apartments and retail, including a Lidl, after the hotel was refused planning due to local objections.
