Parkdean Resorts agrees £600m debt refinancing, to accelerate growth plans: Parkdean Resorts, the UK’s largest holiday park operator, has agreed a £600m refinancing of its senior debt, with funds managed by Ares Management’s European Direct Lending strategy, well in advance of its facilities maturing in March 2024 and March 2025. The agreement with Ares replaces Parkdean’s existing syndicated debt facilities with a single lender. With the support of shareholder Onex Corporation, Parkdean will now accelerate its growth plans. Steve Richards, chief executive officer of Parkdean Resorts, said: “We’re pleased to announce Parkdean Resorts’ successful refinancing, and are grateful for the long-term support we have received from our shareholder Onex and lender Ares, which is testament to the strength of our business and the broader outlook for the UK holiday park sector. The business performance is resilient, reflecting our good value self-catering proposition, and we look forward with confidence to a busy summer season, and the acceleration of our growth plans.” The refinancing follows last year’s decision to pause a sale. Parties linked to the sale process included Haven owners Bourne Leisure and US private equity firm Apollo Global Management. The private equity companies PAI Partners and TPG were said to have joined forces in a bid. Onex had hired Morgan Stanley to find a buyer for the business, with an estimated £1.6bn price tag, but it decided last June to “pause the process” and revisit it “when the macroeconomic backdrop has improved”. Parkdean’s 66 parks were fully booked over the Easter holidays, while the prospects for the summer are also said to be very strong. The company will recruit for 11,000 roles in its business across the country this year – including cleaners, bar staff, chefs, kitchen team members, waiting staff, receptionists, lifeguards and security officers. Parkdean Resorts features in the Propel Turnover & Profits Blue Book, the latest version of which was released on Friday (14 April). Its turnover of £536,400,000 for the year ending 31 December 2021 is the 18th highest in the database. Its pre-tax profit of £79,600,000 is the sixth highest in the database. The Blue Book ranks companies by turnover, profit and profit conversion, listing directors’ earnings for the past five years. Companies can now have an unlimited number of people receive access to Propel Premium for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or a supplier. The single subscription rate is £495 plus VAT for operators and £595 plus VAT for suppliers. Email jo.charity@propelinfo.com to upgrade your subscription.

Premium subscribers to receive latest Who’s Who of UK Food and Beverage and access to videos from latest Propel Multi-Club Conference today: Premium subscribers are to receive the latest Who’s Who of UK Food and Beverage and access to the videos from the latest Propel Multi-Club Conference today (Friday, 21 April). The Who’s Who of UK Food and Beverage is the first database where full profiles of 667 of the UK’s top food and beverage operators are available in one place. It features more than 174,000 words of content, including 74 updated entries, while 16 new companies have been added. The companies, listed in alphabetical order, will have their most recent results reported as well as broader information around Ebitda, plans and trading style available. The database merges Companies House information, interviews and other public information to provide an easy to reference and exhaustive guide to the sector. Also today, Premium subscribers are to be given exclusive access to the recording and slides from the latest Propel Multi-Club Conference. They will be sent 12 videos at 9am that will include: Razak Helalat, founder of Black Rock Restaurant Group; Meriel Armitage, founder of Club Mexicana; and Nick Mackenzie, chief executive of Greene King. Premium subscribers also receive access to four other databases: the Propel Multi-Site Database, produced in association with Virgate; the New Openings Database; the Propel Turnover & Profits Blue Book; and the UK Food and Beverage Franchisor Database. Companies can now have an unlimited number of people receive access to Propel Premium for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or a supplier. The single subscription rate is £495 plus VAT for operators and £595 plus VAT for suppliers. Email jo.charity@propelinfo.com to upgrade your subscription. Premium subscribers also receive their morning newsletter 11 hours early, at 7pm the evening before; regular video content and regular exclusive columns from Propel group editor Mark Wingett.

SimpsInns performs ‘exceptionally well’ as profit more than doubles and turnover exceeds pre-pandemic levels: Scottish hospitality group SimpsInns has said it “performed exceptionally well” in the year ending 31 July 2022, with profits more than doubling and turnover exceeding pre-pandemic levels. The company, which operates an independent portfolio of restaurants, bars, hotels and leisure facilities across Ayrshire, saw pre-tax profit rise from £1,028,218 in 2021 to £2,283,884. Turnover increased from £5,164,745 in 2021 to £9,839,433, which was also up on the £6,796,561 reported in the last full year before the pandemic (ending 31 July 2019). The company received £59,629 in governments grants compared with £1,238,385 in 2021, and ordinary dividends of £48,000 were paid. Director Malcolm Simpson, in his statement accompanying the accounts, said: “SimpsInns has performed exceptionally well during the 2021-22 trading year, despite the lasting effects of covid-19, with continued periods of closure and disruption to trading in all aspects of business. While still a very challenging year operationally, our commitment to retain and support our team through the difficult covid period paid dividends, with our experienced team supporting growth in our business. The business did well to capitalise on the opportunity of staycations, growing occupancy and room rate throughout the year. The successful return on the commitment and continued investment in both spa and leisure and our estate has returned better than expected results. With the government support on business rates and the VAT offset, albeit for only part of the year, this has helped us manage the increased costs, especially in energy, wages and food and drink, and deliver an exceptional return to the bottom-line profit. The directors are very pleased with performance in the past year, while predicting the coming year to be even more challenging, and remain confident SimpsInns is in a strong position to navigate this successfully, as we have demonstrated in the past.”

Merlin Attractions insist Chessington World of Adventures will stay open during forthcoming strike action: Operator Merlin Attractions has insisted Chessington World of Adventures will stay open during planned strike action this spring. Engineers at the resort have planned a wave of walkouts in a dispute over pay from the end of April, including May Day weekend, Coronation weekend and the late spring bank holiday. Members of the Unite union at the south west London theme park are seeking a pay increase in line with RPI inflation, which currently stands at 13.5%. The union said Merlin is attempting to impose a real terms pay cut on its workers. The engineers will walk out on days between April 28-May 1, May 5-8, May 12-15 and May 26-29, but Merlin insists Chessington will stay open across strike action, reports The Daily Mail. “We are committed to reaching an agreement that is affordable and sustainable for the business, as well as being fair to colleagues,” a spokesman for Chessington World of Adventures told the newspaper. “We urge Unite to call off the planned industrial action and enter into realistic talks to reach a suitable agreement. We are open to further discussions and are keen to resolve this matter as soon as possible, to minimise any impact on guests we welcome to the resort. We want to reassure all guests that their safety is our top priority. We have comprehensive plans in place for days affected by the strikes to ensure we continue to deliver our high-quality guest experience alongside robust safety measures.” Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Merlin Attractions is an extremely wealthy company which is anticipating a bumper year. It can fully afford to make a fair pay offer to its workers, but it has chosen not to do so. The engineers are critical to the safe and smooth operation of Chessington, so their employer should be rewarding them for their vital work instead of seeking to impose a real-terms pay cut.” Unite regional officer Lui D’Cunha added: “Strike action will inevitably cause a huge amount of disruption at Chessington, and it will greatly affect the experience of customers. However, this dispute is entirely of the company's own making. It has been given every opportunity to make workers a fair pay offer but has refused to do so.”

Red tape ‘biggest challenge’ to London’s clubbing scene: Rising costs and changing trends may have damaged the once upbeat London clubbing scene, but its biggest threat lies in red tape and hostility from the authorities. Jack Henry who runs one of the UK’s largest clubs, E1 in East London, told The Telegraph: “We spend most of our time fighting to stay open.” He said a police licensing officer is in contact on a weekly basis as noise complaints, anti-social behaviour and police inquiries about incidents involving customers getting bothered on the train home all add to a never-ending stack of paperwork. “90% of the time we haven’t done anything wrong,” he told the newspaper. “When problems do happen, rather than working with a venue, they tend to try and put more conditions on a license.” In other large European cities, and even in some smaller UK ones, “they welcome the industry” and the money it brings, Henry said. “It seems in London we’re sort of the dirty backstreet club that no one wants,” he added. London has lost a quarter of its nightclubs since 2019.

Trailblazing US food critic passes away: Mimi Sheraton, the food writer and restaurant critic who pioneered reviewing in disguise, has passed away in Manhattan, aged 97. In a six-decade career, Sheraton was The New York Times’s food and restaurant critic from 1976 to 1983 and also worked for Vanity Fair, Time, Condé Nast Traveler and other magazines. She also wrote 16 books, including restaurant guides, cookbooks and a memoir. She calculated in 2013 that she had eaten 21,170 restaurant meals professionally in 49 countries. She was the first woman to review restaurants for The New York Times and pioneered dining in wigs and tinted glasses and using aliases for reservations to avoid having attentions lavished on her. “The longer I reviewed restaurants, the more I became convinced that the unknown customer has a completely different experience from either a valued patron or a recognised food critic,” she wrote in her 2004 memoir. “For all practical purposes, they might as well be in different restaurants.” The New York Times required three visits to a restaurant before publishing a review, while Sheraton dined six to eight times before passing judgment. For an article on deli sandwiches, she collected 104 corned beef and pastrami samples in one day to evaluate the meat and sandwich-building techniques. She wrote a review for New York magazine in 1972 after tasting all 1,196 items being sold in the Bloomingdale’s food department, which took her 11 months.