Hastings Hotels, the Belfast-based hotel firm, has instructed brokers to search for a sale.
The Irish News reports Hastings Hotels has been valued “at between £180 million ($244 million) and £200 million ($271 million), with the sale reported to have been given the working title Project Kestrel.”
The company has six hotels and 894 rooms, all of which it owns and all of which are in Northern Ireland.
There are four in Belfast — the 300-room Grand Central Hotel; 272-room Europa Hotel; 106-room Stormont Hotel; and 98-room Culloden Estate & Spa — and two elsewhere in the country, the 64-room Everglades Hotel in Derry and the 17th-century, 54-room Ballygally Castle, near the town of Larne on the Antrim Coast.
Upon CoStar News Hotels contacting Hastings Hotels, the firm said it declined to comment at this time.
Since 1997, Hastings also has owned 50% of the 142-room Merrion Hotel in Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, but that hotel share is not on the sale block.
The late William Hastings founded the company in 1966 with the acquisition of two hotels, one of those being the Stormont.
In its latest earnings report for the 12 months to the end of October 2025, released on March 16, the firm reported a 4% year-on-year rise in turnover to approximately £55.8 million and a 50% rise in pre-tax profit of £11.37 million.
Business advisory PwC has been appointed to investigate possible investors.