Green light for new north-west hotel

A new Holiday Inn Express Hotel is to go ahead in Derry-Londonderry, creating nearly 50 new jobs.

The Duddy Group, owned by developer, Brendan Duddy, is behind the £7m project which was first revealed in 2013.

The new three-star venue will have 116 bedrooms and a Marco Pierre White New York Italian restaurant – the second branded outlet from the celebrity chef to open in Northern Ireland. Two meeting rooms and three retail units will also be included.

Invest NI has offered £724,000 of support for the project alongside an additional £475,000 from the Department for Communities. The project has also secured £1m of mezzanine funding from Whiterock Capital through Invest NI’s Access to Finance strategy.

Announcing the scheme this week, Invest NI’s chief executive, Alastair Hamilton, said:

“The addition of this internationally acknowledged brand will underline the city’s position as a quality destination and will contribute to achieving government’s targets to grow tourism revenues by £1bn and visitor numbers to 4.5 million by 2020,” he added.

Developer Brendan Duddy said recently that he believed the new hotel would provide a good base for visitors that wanted to explore the city and the surrounding area:

“We wanted to grow tourism in the north-west and create employment opportunities for service providers in the region,” he added. “The support from Invest NI and the Department for Communities will enable us to progress our investment plans and we are aiming to have the hotel open for business by early 2018.”

The new Holiday Inn Express Hotel will be located on the Strand Road in the centre of the city.

Our picture shows chef, Marco Pierre White, whose new outlet in Derry will be his second in NI. He already has a steakhouse at the Park Avenue Hotel in Belfast.