Hotel buying spree continues

PHUKET: Central Hotels & Resorts (CHR), which last month announced that it had bought the Islandia Park Resort in Karon for more than a billion baht, has also bought the Jiva Resort & Spa in Kata.

This most recent purchase brings the number of properties CHR owns in Phuket to four; the company’s other properties in Phuket are the Central Karon Village and Central Waterfront Suites in Karon. The company has a further 10 resorts and hotels in Thailand.

CHR would not disclose the price paid for the 128-room Jiva Resort, but the Gazette understands that it was around 400 million baht and that global investment firm Lehman Brothers is also a party to the deal.

Elsewhere on the island, a plot of beachfront land at Emerald Bay, south of Patong, is in the process of being sold by its current owners, Taiwan’s Evergreen Group, which has shipping, airline and hotel interests.

The details of this deal have yet to be made public.