A THREE-star York hotel listed on a travel website in January as being among the dirtiest in Europe has been sold for more than £2 million.

The buyer of the Minster Hotel is the family-owned Kaye’s Hotels Ltd. of Wakefield, West Yorks, which now plans to invest £500,000 in the Bootham premises over the next six months.

The decision to sell the 34-bedroom hotel was taken by Colin Marsh, the former owner, in October, some three months before it appeared on the TripAdvisor guide, “naming and shaming” places to stay which they claimed did not come up to scratch on cleanliness.

At the time, Mr Marsh vigorously defended the hotel by pointing out that the AA had given it a 70 per cent rating and that reviews on TripAdvisor could be written by anybody, even without staying at the hotel, “whereas other booking websites show the hotel scores similar results to other hotels in the city.”

Solicitor Andrew Lindsay, of Denison Till of York, who represented Mr Marsh for the sale, said that the hotel was put on the market last October, before the adverse publicity.

Behind Kaye’s Hotels Ltd are Tony and Debbie Kaye, who own the four-star 65-bedroom Waterton Park Hotel, in Wakefield, and who used to own York’s famous 13-bedroom Guy Fawke’s hotel in High Petergate until they sold it to ill-fated property magnate David Hattersley. It is now for sale again by administrators with a guide price of £1.25 million.

Mr Kaye’s mother, Deidre Kaye, said that the hotel would now be managed by her son while her daughter, Debbie Taylor, would be in charge of sales and marketing.

All 14 employees would stay on and she had hopes of bringing staff numbers up to at least 20 within the next five years.

She said: “The hotel had a terrible press earlier this year, but we will raise the standards by using all our 60 years of experience in the hotel industry. We are spending £500,000 to get it into a first-class condition so that we can market it as a good-quality hotel in York, with two very good function rooms and lots of car parking space.”

Both the two phases of remedial work spanning six months will take place carefully to ensure that customers will not be badly affected.

The first three months will see the restoration of the original Victorian house, revamping 14 bedrooms and totally gutting the kitchen and starting again.

The second phase involves revamping all the public areas.


From Hudsons to The Minster

This was the fourth time that York lawyers Denison Till had acted in the sale and acquisition of The Minster Hotel over the past ten years.

In 2000, Andrew Lindsay, of the law firm’s corporate department, acted for Major Jim Barlow and his business partner Navin Varma when they acquired the business, then known as Hudsons Hotel.

Two years later, Mr Lindsay again acted for Major Barlow when he bought out his business partner and in 2003, Denison Till was involved for a third time when Mr Lindsay negotiated a sale for Major Barlow to Colin and Sharon Marsh.

They acquired it through Minster Hotel Ltd.

Mr Lindsay said: “I have got to know this business quite well over the last few years.”