In August 2002 Graphite invested in Golden Tulip, a start-up developer and manager of superior budget hotels in the UK. We agreed to fund the roll-out of both freehold and leasehold properties.

At the time of our investment, the superior budget hotel market was an under-supplied, yet growing, sector of the UK hotel market. Graphite backed an experienced management team that had identified an opportunity to roll-out superior budget hotels. They had secured the UK franchise to the Golden Tulip brand, a well-known and respected continental European hotel chain, with which to exploit this opportunity.

Graphite had previously successfully backed the chief executive who had significant experience in sourcing development sites and managing the process from site acquisition to finished hotel.  The chief executive had built an effective management team to manage both the portfolio development and operations. Through a combination of greenfield development, acquisition and a management contract the group grew to operate six hotels and had a strong pipeline of planned new openings.