Center Parcs chain put up for sale
Center Parcs has been put up for sale by its owner, Canadian private equity firm Brookfield, the Financial Times has reported.
The holiday village chain could fetch somewhere between £4bn and £5bn, having been purchased in 2015 for around £2.4bn.
The Financial Times reported that financial advisors had been appointed to assess potential buyers.
Opening its first site at Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire in 1987, the chain now operates six holiday villages in the UK and Ireland and attracts over 2 million annual visitors.
In February, Center Parcs pulled out of its plans to open a site at Oldhouse Warren in Crawley on environmental and ecological grounds. The development was expected to cost between £350m and £400m in total.
At the height of the Pandemic, the chain suffered a loss during 2021, but returned to a profit of £66m in the financial year ending April 2022, with sales rising almost fourfold to £503m.