The Cresta Court Hotel is to close tomorrow for 12 months - amid speculation that it is to be used to house migrants.
Staff at the Altrincham hotel were suddenly informed this morning that the 148-bedroom hotel would be closing for a year from Wednesday morning.
The news means that all existing bookings, including Christmas parties, have been cancelled with immediate effect.
The hotel's website has also been taken down.
The hotel's night manager told Altrincham Today that all cancelled bookings would receive a full refund.
However, the spokesperson would not comment any further on the situation or clarify why the hotel was closing for 12 months.
The Best Western Cresta Court, a fixture of the Altrincham hospitality scene since the late 1970s, was acquired by Vine Hotels last year.
Vine Hotels is owned by Greg Dyke, the former director general of the BBC and former chairman of the FA.
Its portfolio of hotels includes the Best Western The Dartmouth Hotel and Best Western Abbots Barton in Canterbury, both of which have previously been used to house migrants.
Although there is no confirmation yet that the Cresta Court will be used to house asylum seekers, the use of hotels for such a purpose by the Home Office has become increasingly common in recent years.
One of those, controversially, has been the Britannia Ashley Hotel in Hale, just a mile and a half away from the Cresta Court, which was closed down for public use and used to house over 100 migrants in February 2023.
In March 2024, according to the most recent figures available, there were 35,686 asylum seekers being accommodated in hotels across the UK.
This represented a 22% fall from the end of December with more people moving into “dispersal accommodation”, usually a flat or shared house managed by the Home Office.
In the year to March the government spent £3.1billion on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, or around £8million a day.
The decision to close the Cresta Court appears to have been taken very recently.
Only last week the hotel announced the appointment of Rob Nicholson as its new general manager.
Vine Hotels said the appointment marked "a new era for the Cresta Court Hotel, as a reinvestment programme is rolled out at the property, aiming to underline its long-standing reputation for excellent quality, and affordable hospitality in the region".
