HOTEL giants Andras House ended its 2016 financial year with a profit of nearly £2 million, an 18 per cent drop in profits on the previous year, when the it was in the black by £2.4m.
But turnover for the year to April 30 rose to £16.8m - an increase of some £600,000 on the year before.
Andras House operates a portfolio of popular hotels in Belfast, including the Holiday Inn Express in Queen’s Quarter, the Ramada Plaza at Shaw’s Bridge and the two Ibis Hotels on University Street and Castle Street.
While the hotelier’s gross profits were up by £500,000 to just over £9m, taxes of the same amount and a similar jump in administrative expenses resulted in an overall decrease in their bottom line profits.
In a strategic report filed with the accounts, the group’s directors said that the hospitality market remained “highly competitive”.
“The directors are conscious of the need to control costs and maintain the high standards of service achieved going forward in order to remain competitive,” they added.
The group’s total employee figure also increased in 2016, standing at 246 compared to 220 in 2015. Andras House’s wage bill came in at just over £4.2m, a year-on-year rise of £300,000. The six directors were remunerated to the tune of £325,000.
For the second year in a row, no dividends were paid to the group’s shareholders.
Andras House was founded in 1981 by Diljit Rana, now Lord Rana, and originally developed and leased office space and restaurants in Belfast.
The Inland Revenue offices in Dorchester House and the NI Audit office in Elmwood House are just two of many properties developed by the firm during its first decade in business.
In 1990, the company broke ground on their first hotel, which operated under franchise as the Holiday Inn Garden Court. This was the first new hotel to be built in Belfast in more than two decades.
Following the opening of the Beannchor Group’s Bullitt Hotel in the city in October, Belfast’s hotel market is set to get even more competitive in the next few years, with several more hotels set to be completed.
The 67-room Bedford Hotel on Donegall Square is expected to open within the next few months, while the work transforming the Harland and Wolff drawing office in the Titanic Quarter into a boutique hotel is due to be completed before the close of the year.
