44 1GM Monday July 27 2020 | the times
Business
on any of the other businesses on the
estate. They include Woburn Safari
Park, Woburn Golf Club, which has
three championship courses, and
Woburn Abbey and gardens, home to
the Dukes of Bedford for almost 400
years.
In central London, the BedfordEstate owns 200 properties in the
fashionable Bloomsbury area.
“This has been a very difficult deci-
sion and one we have thought long and
hard about,” the spokeswoman said.
“We have a fantastic team at the hotel,
but unfortunately the unprecedented
economic situation means the business
is no longer viable. We recognise that
this is a very difficult time for all our
staff based at the hotel and are looking
to redeploy them across our other busi-
nesses. In terms of the hotel building,
we have had expressions of interest
from a number of parties.”
The potential for dozens of job losses
comes amid cuts across the wider hotel
industry. Last week, Whitbread, the
owner of Premier Inn, Britain’s biggest
hotel operator, announced that up to
250 jobs were at risk out of 1,300 at its
central support centre, while Marriott
and Millennium & Copthorne Hotels
are reported to have started consulta-
tion processes over redundancies.
UK Hospitality, the trade body, has
estimated that a fifth of jobs at the large
chains are at risk, particularly those
brands that are reliant on overseas
travellers and the conference and ban-
queting market.
Other hotels to close permanently
include the Pitlochry Hydro Hotel, in
Perthshire, and the Buckland Tout-
Saints, a well-known country house
hotel in Devon owned by the Eden
Hotel Collection of Sir Peter Rigby, the
IT entrepreneur.THE WOBURN HOTEL; ALAMYA luxury hotel on the Duke of Bedford’s
Woburn Estate is to close permanently
as a result of the coronavirus, adding to
signs of stress in the sector.
The Woburn Hotel closed its doors
with the rest of the industry at the end
of March. Although hotels have been
able to reopen since July 4, a statement
on its website said yesterday: “It is with
much regret that the extremely difficult
decision has been made for The
Woburn Hotel to remain closed
permanently.”
A spokeswoman for the Woburn
Estate said that the decision had
been taken not to reopen the hotel
because it was “not financially
viable as a business”. It was not
known how many jobs would be
affected, but it was hoped that some
could be deployed to other parts of
the 3,000-acre estate.
The hotel, previously known as
No room at the inn
as Woburn hotel
joins list of closures
Dominic Walsh The Inn at Woburn, changed its name
in 2014 after a refurbishment. It claims
to be “one of Bedfordshire’s finest
country hotels”, with fifty-five bed-
rooms and the two AA-rosette Olivier’s
restaurant, and sits in the heart of the
picturesque Georgian village of
Woburn at the gateway to the Woburn
Estate.
The spokeswoman said that the clo-
sure of the hotel would have no impact
The Woburn
Hotel, above,
sits at the
gateway to
the Woburn
Estate and
Woburn
AbbeyT H s g t E W A