Last month, rumors swirled that British billionaire twins Sir David Rowat Barclay and Sir Frederick Hugh Barclay were looking to sell the Ritz Hotel in London at an estimated £800 million—or £6.1 million per guestroom.
Those rumors have turned out to be true, and the twins have tapped Jones Lang LaSalle to work with Spartan Advisors, the investment and advisory firm founded by the brothers’ long-term associate Richard Faber, according to Bloomberg. The hotel property and an adjacent building will be available to “a handful of global investors,” the news site said, mostly from the Middle East and Asia as well as “a handful of European and U.S. families.” The additional building could add about 50 guestrooms to the hotel’s stock, while the basement casino could be adapted for a different use.
Notably, whoever succeeds in acquiring the property will also get rebranding rights, which means luxury brands from global hotel companies have an incentive to bid. In other words, the Ritz London could, in theory, become a Ritz-Carlton hotel under the Marriott International umbrella.
The Ritz London opened in 1906 under the auspices of Swiss hotelier César Ritz, the former manager of the city’s Savoy Hotel. The Barclay brothers acquired the property for £75 million in 1995.