AccorHotels has signed five new hotels in Yorkshire which will open Q1 next year, as overseas visitors spend an extra £52m visiting the region in just one year.
MGallery York, Mercure Leeds Centre, Mercure Kenwood Hall and Mercure Tankersley Manor will go through extensive renovations ahead of their opening dates, and ibis Budget Sheffield is a new build property.
The five new hotels, which collectively offer 443 new Accor rooms to the region, are to be opened with different management and franchise partners as tourism in Yorkshire continues to grow.
According to AccorHotels analysis, Yorkshire saw 1,274,000 visits from overseas in 2017, with visitors collectively spending 10,619,000 nights in the region driving revenues of £530m. This was an increase of £52m compared to 2016 and shows the importance of the region for leisure and business travellers from all over the world.
Two of the region’s most prominent cities, York and Leeds, were in the top 20 cities in the UK ranked on number of visitors and revenues driven, with Sheffield, Bradford and Doncaster also in the top 50.
Overseas visitors to Leeds spent £117m on their visits in 2017, and those to York collectively spent £97m, underlying the importance of international business and leisure tourism to city economies.
The MGallery brand, offering boutique luxury, is perfect for the historic town of York, which has many attractions for tourists. To open a hotel here is an important move for AccorHotels as commercial space within the city is highly sought after.
Mercure Kenwood Hall and Mercure Tankersley Manor, both situated on the outskirts of Sheffield, offer 4* countryside settings, which are excellent for weekend breaks, or as a base to explore Yorkshire. They also offer spa facilities and space for events such as weddings and business conferences.
ibis budget Sheffield and Mercure Leeds Centre will serve visitors looking to make the most of the bustling city centres of Leeds and Sheffield for both business and leisure purposes.
Philip Lassman, VP Development, AccorHotels UK and Ireland, said, “Signing five new hotels in Yorkshire is a great move for AccorHotels. It is a thriving region and we are happy to bolster our presence here. Our franchise and management partners are finding the variety and flexibility of our brands appealing.
'The MGallery and Mercure brands in particular are designed to be flexible so they can incorporate local touches into the design and overall guest experience allowing the hotels to offer something truly different without wavering from the internationally recognised and expected standards.”
Thomas Dubaere, COO of Northern Europe, AccorHotels, said, “Yorkshire is a diverse region attracting business and leisure guests who have different requirements, which is why it is so strategically important that we are able to offer a wide range of brands to cater for the differing guest needs from luxury and midscale to economy and budget.
'This diversity of brands is important across all our hotels in the UK which by the beginning of 2019 will be 250 in total.
'In a global economy, hotels increasingly need to attract guests from all over the world, so we are seeing a lot of interest from hotel owners who want to have the power of an internationally-recognised brand and global network behind them.”