Union Investment acquires Premier Inn hotel in Dublin’s Docklands district

Union Investment is entering the Irish hotel market. The Hamburg-based real estate investment manager has acquired the planned Premier Inn hotel in Dublin’s Docklands. Union Investment has been active in the Irish office property market since 2015. The company also recently entered the Irish housing market by acquiring the 8th Lock residential project in Dublin.

The hotel will offer 9,936 sq m of rental space and a total of 262 rooms spread over nine floors. Construction is expected to begin in July of this year. Completion is scheduled for autumn 2023. The hotel is already let to Premier Inn on a 25-year lease. The creditworthy tenant is part of Whitbread PLC, the UK’s largest hospitality group, and is the market leader in the premium budget hotel segment.



“We are expecting demand for hotels to recover by 2023 – the year of completion – at the latest and we intend to further expand our high-quality portfolio through targeted acquisitions. It currently comprises around 80 hotels. We will focus primarily on core products with resilient concepts and operators. The planned Premier Inn hotel is a core property in one of Europe’s best performing hotel markets,” said Andreas Löcher, head of Investment Management Hospitality at Union Investment.

The project site is located in the Castleforbes submarket in the northern Docklands. It benefits from excellent public transport links and is within easy reach of important demand generators in the city. In recent years, this former port and industrial area has been transformed into one of Dublin’s prime office locations and is regarded as the city’s financial and technology hub. The Convention Centre Dublin is approximately ten minutes’ walk from the property.

The vendor and developer of the hotel project is Glenveagh Properties. The purchase price was not disclosed. The acquisition will be added to the holdings of institutional real estate fund UniInstitutional European Real Estate.

BNP Paribas Real Estate acted as advisor to Union Investment.