The luxury hotel group Belmond – taken over in 2019 by LVMH – is ready to enter Lake Como. The negotiations for the acquisition by the transalpine giant of the Urio castle, located between Moltrasio and Carate, on Lake Como, are – according to what Il Sole 24 Ore reports – at an advanced stage and the operation could be concluded by 2024. The Castle is currently part of the real estate assets of Opus Dei, which made it a center of reflection in 1954, after its acquisition by the founder of the Work Josemaria Escrivà de Balaguer.
The castle of the Melzi d’Eril family
The Carate Urio Castle real estate complex includes a historic building surrounded by an Italian garden of approximately 2 hectares, has a broad view of Lake Como and acquired the status of a castle after the extensive modifications made in the nineteenth century by the family of Melzi d’Eril, who added turrets, pinnacles and battlements to the original layout of the seventeenth-century villa. For the moment there are few rumors circulating on the figure proposed for the acquisition by LVMH – there is talk of an investment worth around 50 million euros – but it is demonstrated that it is a strategic operation for the LVMH-Belmond group. the intense activity of new acquisitions that has been taking place for some years on the shores of Lake Como and which involves leading financial and hotel groups on a global level.
LVMH’s Italian properties
Belmond, which entered the orbit of the luxury empire founded by Bernard Arnault, was acquired 4 years ago for a value of approximately 3.2 billion euros. Its holdings in Italy, ranging from the Cipriani in Venice, the Caruso in Ravello, the Splendido and Splendido Mare hotels in Portofino, up to Villa San Michele in Fiesole, constitute a portfolio with an estimated value of around 1.3 billion euros. The group is also very active in Sardinia where Belmond took over from Marriott in the management of two of the 4 hotels on the Costa Smeralda which belong to the Qatar sovereign fund. The entire Italian luxury hotel market appears to be in turmoil, given the strong international competition for the most sought-after destinations in Tuscany, the South and Venice. In the first 10 months of 2023 the Italian hotel market reached an amount of almost one billion euros in new investments and according to analysts it could close the year with a total of around 1.3 billion in new invested capital.
2023-11-15 14:27:33
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