Almost a five-star investment

There are about 2,000 hotels in Poland, half of which experts claim are, or potentially could be, for sale. However, there have only been a few clear-cut sale transactions. And many of these are private investments. The best hotels in the largest cities attract the highest prices, but such transactions are governed by rules of their own. Meanwhile, the hotel chain segment of the market is characterised by different sorts of acquisitions, based on franchising, leasing or management. "With hotel sales we are dealing with two types of transactions: the sale of a hotel business - the real estate including the hotel plus a package of contracts necessary for operating the business - and the sale of the shares in a company that owns a hotel or a number of hotels. The transactions for hotel chains differ considerably from those for ?independent' hotels, the number of which is hard to estimate, and their supply is considerably higher compared to the supply of hotel chains," claims Agata Demuth,