GuestInvest, the company which lets hotel guests buy their own rooms, has acquired the Alias Hotels chain in a deal worth £30m.

GuestInvest launched its first hotel, Guesthouse West in London’s Notting Hill earlier this year and offers investors the chance to buy their own room in the hotel, stay there for up to 52 nights per year and also receive a return on their investment by sharing the profits of letting the room out for the remainder of the year.

The company will now add the portfolio of five Alias Hotels – Rossetti in Manchester, Kandinsky in Cheltenham, Seattle in Brighton, Barcelona in Exeter and the new St Louis in Liverpool which is due to open in the spring 2006 – to the concept.

The deal is part of GuestInvest’s plan to spend £300m building up a chain of property investment hotels around the UK and marks the beginning of a planned rapid expansion programme which will see Alias Hotels launch at least two new properties a year in a bid to become the UK’s leading urban lifestyle hotel and hospitality brand.

The Alias management team, including founders Nigel Chapman and Nicholas Dickinson, will be reinvesting in the business along with GuestInvest.

“This deal solves the challenge of matching a burgeoning retail brand with real estate – which is a long term investment,” said Chapman. “It is a marriage between an innovative and successful investment company and a ground-breaking and profitable urban lifestyle hotel brand and as such has almost unlimited growth potential.”

Since GuestInvest opened Guesthouse West in March and offered rooms for sale at £235,000 for a 99-year lease, investors have already seen a 6.5 per cent rate of return. The first – and only – buyer to sell his room achieved a 10 per cent gain on the original price after just four months.

In August this year Alias Hotels reported growth in sales from £5.6m in 2003 to £7m and a 75 per cent increase in operating profits to £1.56m from £890,000 in 2003. Details: www.aliashotels.com or www.guestinvest.com