Northern Ireland family hotel group Hastings reports jump in pre-tax profits to £6.9m

The east Belfast-based firm, founded by Sir William Hastings, also reported an 18% jump in its turnover from £43.18m to £50.74m over the year to October 31 2023.

But the accounts filed at Companies House show there was an even healthier leap of 62% in pre-tax profits from £4.3m to £6.9m, while its figure for net assets climbed from £29.3m to £34.1m.

The company is now led by Sir William's son Howard Hastings, chairman of the Hastings Hotels group.

It owns six hotels around Northern Ireland – The Stormont, Europa, Grand Central and Culloden hotels in Belfast, as well as Londonderry’s Everglades and the Ballygally Hotel outside Larne

A strategic report filed with the accounts state that “the directors consider that the outturn for the year and the year-end position to be satisfactory”.

It adds: “The group will continue to seek every opportunity to increase profitable turnover.”

However, the company report said that the external commercial environment is expected to remain competitive this year.

It said that business risks facing the group related to competition from other licensed premises and hotel groups, and employee retention. There were also financial risks like liquidity, foreign exchange, credit risk and interest rate risk.

It stated that the group maintains a mix of short to medium term debt finance to ensure enough funds for operations and planned expansions.

And it monitors customer feedback by using surveys and external sources like TripAdvisor and social media sites.

The report adds: "Where possible, we source produce locally, be this food and beverages, or for our building materials and furnishings.

“This enables us to have frequent engagements with suppliers who make their livelihoods in the same community as we do, and in return, we achieve strong community support for our business from our supplier base.”

Hotel revenue included the cost of room rentals, food and beverage sales and other goods and services. Revenue is recorded when rooms are occupied, or goods and services have been delivered or rendered.

The group also received rental income of £337,273 over the year, up from £261,320.

Its pay bill jumped from £11.5m to £14.9m, and employee numbers grew from 753 to 836.

The Grand Central Hotel and Europa Hotels picked up a Merit Award at the CIE Tours International Awards of Excellence which took place in Dublin in February. In 2023, The Grand Central in Bedford Street was named the Best Five-Star Hotel in Ireland.

Tourism figures for Northern Ireland have shown a continued recovery in performance since lockdowns brought the industry to a standstill.

Statistics from the NI Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra) for 2022 showed a 10.5% increase in holiday nights in 2022 and a 2.2% increase in spend by domestic holiday visitors in the same year.

And there were more than 1.1 million overnight trips by visitors from the Republic to Northern Ireland in 2022, compared to 756,000 in 2019, a 51% rise.

The visitors spent 2.6 million nights in Northern Ireland in 2022, representing a 42% increase on the 1.9 million nights in 2019.