Dublin City Council has granted planning permission to the owners of the five-star Morrison Hotel in Dublin for an extension that will bring the total number of hotel rooms to 16.
The Council granted planning permission to Centauro Investments XI S.A.R.L. for the additional hotel rooms.
Zetland Capital, a London-based private equity firm bought the Morrison hotel in 2021 for an undisclosed sum though it was reported at the time that the deal was expected to be worth more than €65 million.
The boutique hotel on Dublin’s Ormonde Quay Lower was owned by Russian billionaire investor Elena Baturina, who bought it from Nama in 2012 for €22 million.
Extension plan
In the hotel bedroom extension plan, four of the new rooms are to be provided at basement level, while eight bedrooms are to be provided at ground floor in lieu of three meeting rooms while on the fourth floor, four bedrooms are to be provided.
In a letter lodged with Dublin City Council outlining the rationale behind the application, Hotel Director for the Morrison Hotel, Patrick Joyce points out that the hotel was granted a five-star rating at the end of 2022 following major upgrade works to move to the Hilton five-star Curio brand.
In his letter, Mr Joyce stated that the move to convert the meeting and event space to bedrooms was driven by two business imperatives.
He said that these are the high demand for additional bedroom space in and around central Dublin and the greatly increased cost and difficulty of running meetings and events, particularly in a post Covid-19 environment.
Corporate events
Mr Joyce stated that as a now five-star property “we feel that operating largely scale late night events such as corporate events and weddings with large attendee numbers, will not meet the expectations of our resident guests up house who are not in attendance."
Mr Joyce states that “noise management both in and around the hotel, we know from experience will negatively impact our guests' experience and by association the business performance."
He said: “Repurposing the space to bedrooms will reduce late night noise to guests and for the local area.”
Mr Joyce said that the application “will have a positive benefit on several fronts, thus giving the business the best long term proposition for staff and owners, allowing both to benefit from ongoing and future investment into the property”.
The Dublin City Council planner’s report in the case reveals that there is a general presumption against an over-concentration of hotels and aparthotels to ensure a balance is achieved between the requirement to provide for adequate levels of visitor accommodation and other uses in the city such as residential, social, cultural and economic uses.
The report states that pending the outcome of an analysis of the supply and demand for tourism related accommodation in the Dublin City area to be carried out by Dublin City Council, hotels and aparthotels will be considered on a case by case basis having regard to the location of the site and existing hotel provision in the area.
