Was selling British Transport Hotels (British Rail owned railway hotels) a mistake?

och aye · 28 Apr 2025

In hindsight was selling off British Transport Hotels a mistake, in a financial sense? I wonder if the properties had been held on by British Rail and the management side of things had been privatised or a contract with one of the large hotel company's to lease and operate the hotels under their name, perhaps this would have provided a bit of income to Network Rail today?

Of course it's easy to make these hypothesis decades later and under a different railway operating model, and a far different tourism sector compared to the 1980s.

A list of hotels that BTH owned are listed in this Wikipedia article:

British Transport Hotels - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Dr Hoo · 28 Apr 2025

It is far from clear to me that most of the ‘estate’ was in good shape for the future. Old buildings that were almost impossible to update to meet modern standards and needs, at least without massive investment that have had to have come at the expense of the rail network.
The need for hotels at major railway stations was changing in the face of much faster day trains that allowed ‘out and back’ business trips in one day.

ScotGG · 29 Apr 2025

It looks like most of the hotels in big cities are still operating as hotels so must be profitable even after any refurb costs.

Sounds like traditional UK/Treasury short termism. See also selling many utilities. Short term gain for long term losses.

MCR247 · 29 Apr 2025

I dunno I’ve heard people say the Hilton in Nottingham isn’t up to the brands usual standards and from what I remember the layout is kind of weird on this inside. Beautiful brickwork though!

Haywain · 29 Apr 2025

MCR247 said:
I dunno I’ve heard people say the Hilton in Nottingham isn’t up to the brands usual standards and from what I remember the layout is kind of weird on this inside. Beautiful brickwork though!

That wasn’t part of the British Transport Hotels.

Western Lord · 29 Apr 2025

I suppose that if the railway still owned Turnberry there might be a chance of The Open returning!

Turtle · 29 Apr 2025

ScotGG said:
It looks like most of the hotels in big cities are still operating as hotels so must be profitable even after any refurb costs.

Sounds like traditional UK/Treasury short termism. See also selling many utilities. Short term gain for long term losses.

Only too true.

Indigo Soup · 29 Apr 2025

Western Lord said:
I suppose that if the railway still owned Turnberry there might be a chance of The Open returning!

Don't forget that Gleneagles and the Old Course Hotel at St Andrews were also part of the BTH estate!

Yes, access to finance to fund the necessary refurbishments would be a problem, and some hotels probably needed to go. But I suspect that BTH as a whole was generally profitable and could have provided a useful cross-subsidy to British Rail had a suitable corporate structure been politically feasible.

edwin_m · 29 Apr 2025

I can't really see any benefit in keeping hold of the hotels. They weren't part of the core transport function and there were and still are many private sector hotels to choose from, ranging from budget to opulent. So I'd say leaving these things to the market is working reasonably well.

MP33 · 29 Apr 2025

In a Railway magazine, I read an account of a stay in a BTH, in the last years. The non en-suite room and corridor outside, was described as resembling the set of a Pinter play.

Helvellyn · 29 Apr 2025

ScotGG said:
It looks like most of the hotels in big cities are still operating as hotels so must be profitable even after any refurb costs.

Sounds like traditional UK/Treasury short termism. See also selling many utilities. Short term gain for long term losses.

Usually with big international chains behind them for marketing/funding. Could it have made money? Possibly. Was it a core business? No.

Also, privatisation in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. Where Water (and others) went wrong was governments - of all colours - since 1997 allowing leveraged takeovers that loaded them with debt, etc.

Sir Felix Pole · 30 Apr 2025

The Midland Hotel in Manchester was pretty shabby at the end - I went there to an Annual Dinner in that era which was very poor. All it needed, however, was some investment - today it is still one of the city's pre-eminent hotels and highly profitable. Treasury short-terminism indeed.

There was some BTH investment, not necessarily in the right places - the GN at Peterborough had a rather nasty '60s extension as I recall in an attempt to make it more viable. Surprisingly, the Charing X Hotel in London was actually brought back into railway ownership.

Magdalia · 30 Apr 2025

och aye said:
In hindsight was selling off British Transport Hotels a mistake, in a financial sense?

The right decision then, and with hindsight too.

Dr Hoo said:
Old buildings that were almost impossible to update to meet modern standards and needs, at least without massive investment that have had to have come at the expense of the rail network.

And this is the main reason why. The funds available for investment were limited and peripheral businesses like hotels would rarely have got near the top of the priority list. It was much better to take the money and let hotel businesses do the required capital investment.

Gloster · 30 Apr 2025

BR would have lost either way if they had kept them. Either, “Why are you spending so much money on hotels instead of trains,” or a millstone round attempts to modernise the image, “BR has grotty and loss-making hotels than nobody likes.”

och aye · Thursday at 13:19

Gloster said:
BR would have lost either way if they had kept them. Either, “Why are you spending so much money on hotels instead of trains,” or a millstone round attempts to modernise the image, “BR has grotty and loss-making hotels than nobody likes.”

Perhaps I didn't explain my scenario clearly. I more meant BR retaining the hotels and acting as a "landlord" while the hotel operator such as Forte or Stakis Hotels (just to be a bit retro) leased/managed the portfolio of hotels.

Rescars · Thursday at 13:23

I commend "Sauce Supreme" by Peter Land as a good read. He was the last MD of BTH. The book is subtitled "The annihilation of British Transport Hotels"

SynthD · Thursday at 14:56

och aye said:
Perhaps I didn't explain my scenario clearly. I more meant BR retaining the hotels and acting as a "landlord" while the hotel operator such as Forte or Stakis Hotels (just to be a bit retro) leased/managed the portfolio of hotels.

They could have gone a different direction, and teamed up with a developer to rebuild them all as offices. I’m not sure where these hotels were (Marylebone, St Pancras?), but Cannon Street and Charing Cross work well.

edwin_m · Thursday at 15:54

SynthD said:
They could have gone a different direction, and teamed up with a developer to rebuild them all as offices. I’m not sure where these hotels were (Marylebone, St Pancras?), but Cannon Street and Charing Cross work well.

A lot of major stations had railway hotels but I think many of them had gone before the demise of BTH. For example St Pancras and Marylebone were converted to railway offices before then, both subsequently being reinstated as hotels. So presumably developers saw a better commercial opportunity in hotels than offices.

Trainbike46 · Thursday at 16:13

och aye said:
In hindsight was selling off British Transport Hotels a mistake, in a financial sense? I wonder if the properties had been held on by British Rail and the management side of things had been privatised or a contract with one of the large hotel company's to lease and operate the hotels under their name, perhaps this would have provided a bit of income to Network Rail today?

Of course it's easy to make these hypothesis decades later and under a different railway operating model, and a far different tourism sector compared to the 1980s.

A list of hotels that BTH owned are listed in this Wikipedia article:

British Transport Hotels - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In some cases, like the Ayr station hotel, it was a mistake, but mostly because it meant the railway did not own or control a building that was quite literally on the platform!

There might be other places where the hotel is part of the station building, or inextricably linked to the railway infrastructure. Those buildings should remain/ should have remained in railway ownership.

och aye said:
Perhaps I didn't explain my scenario clearly. I more meant BR retaining the hotels and acting as a "landlord" while the hotel operator such as Forte or Stakis Hotels (just to be a bit retro) leased/managed the portfolio of hotels.

That might have been a pretty good way to do it, even if only applied to hotels that are part of a station building.

RT4038 · Thursday at 17:07

och aye said:
Perhaps I didn't explain my scenario clearly. I more meant BR retaining the hotels and acting as a "landlord" while the hotel operator such as Forte or Stakis Hotels (just to be a bit retro) leased/managed the portfolio of hotels.

I don't think this scenario would have worked - a particular issue was that BR lacked the significant investment funds to upgrade the buildings; a hotel chain such as Forte or Stakis would not have been prepared to invest significant sums of money in a building they did not own.

Helvellyn · Thursday at 18:31

edwin_m said:
A lot of major stations had railway hotels but I think many of them had gone before the demise of BTH. For example St Pancras and Marylebone were converted to railway offices before then, both subsequently being reinstated as hotels. So presumably developers saw a better commercial opportunity in hotels than offices.

It was BR who converted Marylebone and St Pancras to offices, which probably saved both from demolition and later allowed them to be sold off and redeveloped as high quality hotels. (The hotel at Marylebone was also of course BR HQ.)

Part of the issue was that hotel standards moved on so quickly. St Pancras shut because few (if any?) rooms were en-suite. The proposed LMS rebuilt of Euston in the 1930s would have seen the Arch and Great Hall disappear 30 years earlier than they did, to be replaced by a new Art Deco station including a large modern hotel on the frontage. I've read elsewhere there were similar plans for an Art Deco hotel to replace the frontage at St Pancras (the trainshed would have remained, being separate but linked to the hotel frontage).

BlueLeanie · Thursday at 18:37

RT4038 said:
I don't think this scenario would have worked - a particular issue was that BR lacked the significant investment funds to upgrade the buildings; a hotel chain such as Forte or Stakis would not have been prepared to invest significant sums of money in a building they did not own.

Forte or Stakis didn't have the cash to run the hotels well either. A regular trip for me in the early 1990s was the Forte "Regent Palace Hotel" in London. Ring for a maid to take you along and unlock the door to the shower rooms. I also stayed in the Forte Royal Oxford around 1998. No showers, a glass panel above every door so the room was lit up like Blackpool from the corridor all night, and I distinctly recall fishing out the plastic film from a microwave lasagne in the restaurant. The Travel Lodge was a revelation in a good night's sleep.

It wasn't just BR, so many hotels just didn't have the capital in the 1970s and 1980s to upgrade their assets.

Rescars · Thursday at 18:48

It isn't just parts of the BTH portfolio which have been resurrected very successfully. The Midland at Morecambe was sold off by the BTC in 1952, but has scrubbed up rather well in the 21st century..

D6130 · Thursday at 18:59

SynthD said:
They could have gone a different direction, and teamed up with a developer to rebuild them all as offices. I’m not sure where these hotels were (Marylebone, St Pancras?), but Cannon Street and Charing Cross work well.

IIRC, the Cannon Street station hotel was closed and demolished in the 1960s because of structural defects connected with the wartime bombing of the station.

Was selling British Transport Hotels (British Rail owned railway hotels) a mistake?

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