Donegal hoteliers Brian and Seán McEniff have bought the Jurys Skylon Hotel in Dublin and Jurys Waterford Hotel from the Jurys Doyle Group for €14 million.
The brothers have also decided to merge their two separate hotel groups into one, creating McEniff Hotels, a 10-strong chain.
The new entity wants to expand into the UK and continental European hotel markets.
Further acquisitions in Ireland are also on the agenda as the McEniffs would be interested in buying hotels in the Ryans and Jurys groups, both in the State and abroad.
Previously, Mr Brian McEniff ran five hotels under the Brian McEniff Hotels brand, while his brother Seán was the key figure in the Tyrconnell Group, comprising three hotels.
The main benefits of the merger would come through cost efficiencies in purchasing, reservations, IT, human resource development, marketing and advertising, they said.
News of the €14 million deal with the Jurys Doyle group comes at a time when the tourism industry in Ireland is experiencing difficult conditions, but Mr Brian McEniff said the long-term outlook was still good. He said the depressed market helped secure a good deal with the Jurys Doyle group.
"It's a good time to buy into a hotel because if the market was going well we probably might not have done as well with Jurys," he said.
Mr McEniff said visitor numbers from the German and US markets had been hardest hit, but McEniff hotels had not been as badly affected as other groups.
He said visitor numbers were down by about 40 per cent in some parts of the State.
"The important season is the one that's just starting - July and August... It's difficult to say how it's going to go."
Some of the group's hotels were "ahead of last year", he said, but 2001 had been particularly difficult because of the foot-and-mouth outbreak.
Mr John McEniff, a director of McEniff Hotels, said because of the geographical spread of the family's hotels, with its concentration in the north-west, the chain was escaping the worst of the downturn.
"We wouldn't be nearly as badly damaged as some other hotels," he said.
"The north-west wouldn't be the classic market for the Germans and the Americans as opposed to say south of the Galway-Dublin line. We'd get a fair bit of domestic and a fair bit of the Northern Ireland market."
Of the merged entity's 10 hotels, seven are in the north-west including four in Donegal, two in Sligo and one in Mayo. There are also two in Dublin and one in Waterford.
Mr Brian McEniff said that while the group had a new hotel - the Grand Canal Hotel in Dublin 4 - coming on-stream next year, bringing to 11 the hotels in the newly merged group, further expansion was on the agenda.
"We would be looking for further expansion. There's no doubt about that," he said,
However, there is no set time-frame for expansion, rather opportunities will be examined as they arise.
Mr John McEniff said the Ryans Hotels in both Amsterdam and Brussels were of interest to the group but Brussels, because it was bigger - with 125 beds compared with 75 beds in Amsterdam - would be of most interest.
"The Brussels hotel would be more in line with the economies that we would be looking at."
Mr Sean McEniff said acquisitions in the south and south-west of Ireland would also be of interest.
"It's important to get a good geographical spread," he said.
The Jurys Skylon Hotel will retain its name but drop the Jurys tag while the Jurys Waterford Hotel is to be renamed the McEniff Ard Rí Hotel.
The takeover date for the two hotels is July 12th. Both are three-star hotels and have a combined total of 186 rooms.
Jurys Doyle chief executive Mr Pat McCann said the hotels had been sold as neither hotel fitted in with the company's strategic business plans.
"We received a very good offer for both properties at the right time and are pleased to have a purchaser who will continue to operate both properties as going concerns with existing management and staff," according to Mr McCann.
