The migrant hotels that have made '£100m' in astonishingly short time period - owned by ONE tycoon
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Two asylum seeker hotels just half a mile apart and majority owned by the same Israeli tycoon are thought to have raked in £100 million from UK taxpayers.
The Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza in West Drayton, near London’s Heathrow airport with 1,080 rooms between them have housed migrants for more than four years.
The four star hotels which used to be packed with tourists are believed to have been used by asylum seekers for longer than almost any other major UK hotel.
The Government signed contracts to take over each of them in either late 2020 or early 2021 as a soaring number of migrants continued to cross the Channel in open boats.
MailOnline visited both hotels this week and discovered them seeming to be fully occupied, and security guards keeping outsiders away.
Migrants said they were generally happy with their ‘very nice’ rooms, but frustrated about long delays in dealing with their asylum applications.
But local residents were less impressed and spoke of their anger about so much public money being used to house and support asylum seekers.
Analysis of Land Registry and financial records revealed a complex web of UK and Jersey registered companies behind both hotels.
But Companies House records reveal that at least 75 per cent of both hotels ultimately belongs to property investor Amir Dayan, 50, who was born in Tel Aviv, and has previously been described as one of Israel’s richest men.
Mr Dayan who is now Cypriot has invested heavily in UK hotels including an unknown number which have been turned over to migrants, but he remains little known in this country.
The Government has never revealed how much it has paid the owners of individual hotels to take them over as asylum hostels.
It has been reported that the rates being negotiated are discounted because every room is being booked for a contracted period of months or years.
Assuming that all 615 rooms at the Holiday Inn and the 465 rooms at the Crowne Plaza were booked solidly for four years by guests paying just £100 a night, the hotels would earn more than £157million.
But one hotel industry expert said the block booking fee paid by the Government could be discounted by at least a third, making a total figure of around £100million likely for the two hotels for a four year period.
It was revealed this week that the Government’s bill for asylum accommodation which was expected to be £4.5billion for the decade from 2019 had soared to £15.3billion – the equivalent of £4,191,780 a day.
Some residents had been paying monthly to use the swimming pool and gym at the Crowne Plaza when the hotel was open to the public, but leisure club memberships were abruptly terminated during Covid.
Stuart Overton, 47, and wife Trudy, 54, who had used the facilities, said: ‘They didn’t offer the chance for us to renew.
‘Then all of a sudden, I noticed they started putting up an 8ft hoarding wall all around the hotel, and I realised they were moving in migrants.
‘There were lot of local people and airport staff who were using the gym and the pool, and it left them all disappointed.
‘There was a pay as you go golf course attached to the hotel and, of course, that closed at the same time.
‘It is what it is, and you can’t do anything about it - but it is a bit soul destroying seeing the Government spend a fortune on these places.’
Mrs Overton added: ‘I knew somebody who worked there, and all the staff just got made redundant. It seems so wrong.’
Milkman Keith Haines, 61, who lives in West Drayton, said: ‘What they have done with these hotels is just horrendous.
‘I see the men from the hotels walking up and down the road. They are mostly young lads.
‘As Reform said, if they were living in tents in France, what is wrong with them staying in tents over here instead of hotels?
‘At the same time, we have some of our veterans living on the streets and pensioners like my 93-year-old mum have lost their heating allowance.’
The manager of The Plough pub next to the Holiday Inn who gave his name as Abi, 48, said: ‘My friend took over the pub a year ago.
‘We knew the pub had lost a lot of business due to the asylum seeker hotel next door. When the ordinary tourists were staying there, they would come in for a drink – but they are not there now.
‘My friend invested a lot of money, hoping that one day the hotel would go back to normal and things would pick up, However, we are still waiting.
‘It doesn’t help when we have challenges of our own. The brewery has put up prices twice since we have been here. If we had more customers, it would help compensate for that
‘Some of the guys in the hotel are OK, but others are troublemakers and come in drunk. Their attitude can be really rude. We have had arguments with them if they are drunk and we refuse to serve them.
‘Others come in demanding cigarettes and upsetting customers. We also see police and ambulances driving up to the hotel three or four times every week.
‘You can’t blame the owner of the hotel. He is a businessman and he wants the best deal. He is getting 100 per cent occupancy and guaranteed money coming in.’
A 77-year-old old retired Heathrow security officer who was drinking at the pub and asked not be named, said: ‘This place used to be packed all the time. There would be lots of American and Chinese tourists coming over from the hotel.
‘Now the hotel has all these migrants in. We see them walking around in new clothes. They have all got phones. The fact that they get this free accommodation is encouraging them to come to this country.
‘The ones who come over from France are not escaping wars, because they are coming from a peaceful country. I don’t think there is any other country that gives them what we do.’
A 57-year-old sandwich van driver from Uxbridge who was also in the pub, said: ‘Having all these guys being put in hotels for free is so frustrating.
‘We didn’t look after our own in this country, yet they get these handouts. It is disgusting.
‘I was made homeless last year with my adult son when my private landlord wanted me out so she could sell up, but the council didn’t want to help me.
‘I have paid taxes all my life, but I had to stay with a friend for three months until I could sort myself out. It all makes me a bit angry.’
With its 8ft high hoarding wall around its perimeter, the Crowne Plaza hotel is said to have been used in recent years as a secure intake centre for new migrant arrivals who stay for seven to ten days before being moved on, although there is evidence that many remain there far longer.
The Daily Mail reported in May 2022 how it tracked one group of 23 migrants after they left the French coast in an inflatable open boat launched from a beach near the town of Gravelines at 1am.
Using ship tracking software, the Mail watched as they were escorted by a French government vessel towards Dover before they were transferred to the Border Force vessel Hurricane.
The Mail watched as they were dropped off at Dover at 10.12am, and boarded a bus for initial security checks before being taken to the migrant processing centre at RAF Manston in Kent.
Later on the same day, the group were seen being picked up by another air-conditioned coach and taken to the five-floor Crowne Plaza, arriving shortly after midnight.
The Crowne Plaza also made headlines in July 2021 when a 24-year-old asylum seeker from Sudan died at the hotel just four months after arriving in the UK following several months of sleeping under a bridge in Calais.
Fellow asylum seekers staged a protest at the time, holding signs saying ‘refugee lives matter’ and claiming the man was ‘neglected to death’.
In May the same year, a High Court judge described the hotel as ‘prison like’ and ordered the Home Office to move a human trafficking victim out of it.
The judge said the man, who had escaped from torture in Kuwait, was not in a suitable environment for a trafficking victim.
The Home Office said at the time that it had tried to rehouse him in a new hotel in Leicester, but he was unable to make the journey due to a chronic back injury.
The Crowne Plaza overlooks a third hotel in the area – the 178 room Novotel in West Drayton – which is also being used for asylum seekers.
The Novotel which is not linked to Mr Dayan is currently home to families of asylum seekers.
MailOnline saw children playing on the driveway outside the hotel this week while some rode bikes around the adjacent car park used by drivers waiting to pick up passengers from Heathrow.
Other asylum seekers were seen relaxing in the sunshine on the grass outside the Holiday Inn, just half a mile away on the other side of the M4 motorway.
The hotel which has no boarding or fence around it is the registered office of his UK empire, but security staff were unable to say if he was there.
There was also no response to a telephone request for comment from one of his operating companies.
The Holiday Inn houses single men and women, as well as families with children, who live on separate floors
Asylum seeker Saeid Hossini, 30, a former furniture maker from Shiraz, Iran, who fled his homeland after taking part in protests against the ruling regime said he had been staying there for a year, waiting for his asylum claim to be decided.
He said: ‘It’s OK here for a while, but if you are here for a long time it is terrible. We get three meals a day. The food is OK, but it is served on plastic plates.
‘Some people staying here are very sad and angry. You see the police and ambulances coming.
‘I am not allowed to work, but if the UK could understand me and let me be part of society, I will support myself.
‘At the moment they don’t want to solve my problem. They want to find false things in my case.’
Saeid said he had to leave Iran to ‘protect’ himself and his family, and claimed asylum when he arrived on a flight from Istanbul, Turkey.
His Iranian friend who gave his name as Nima, 22, and arrived on a flight two-years-ago said he had recently been granted consent to stay in the UK, but was waiting for his paperwork to come through.
Nima said: ‘I have been waiting 20 days for my e-visa, and I can stay here until it arrives, but then I will have to find somewhere of my own.
‘I share a room with someone, and I have asked for my own room so I can get some privacy, but nothing has happened.
‘The food is not bad. There are fruits like banana, orange and apple, and we have cereal for breakfast, as well as oats and toast, and honey and jam.
‘I had sliced chicken and vegetables as a meal today, and sometimes we have pasta.’
Syrian refugee Brahaim Al Jasam, 23, who has been at the Holiday Inn for six months, said: ‘It’s very, very nice.
‘I share a room with my friend, and the food is good. All the people are good, and I don’t have a problem.’
MailOnline found Ramadan Faris, 30, who is an Iraqi Kurd, living with his wife in a tent underneath trees on the edge of the hotel’s grounds.
He explained he had spent nearly four years in the hotel arriving in the UK by a boat with his initial asylum request being turned down, only for him to have the decision reversed by a court in January this year when he appealed.
But he said he and his wife had become homeless and been forced to live in a tent because they had been unable to find anywhere else to go.
He showed MailOnline a letter from his doctor, stating that he was suffering from anxiety and depression, and urgently needed help to find accommodation ‘to prevent further deterioration of his health and well being’.
Land Registry records reveal that the Crowne Plaza was bought by a Jersey-registered company called R.Heathrow Propco Ltd, ultimately controlled by Mr Dayan for £85,329,994 on August 22, 2919.
Another company R.Heathrow M4 J4 Propco Ltd which is also ultimately owned by him bought the freehold of the Holiday Inn for £82,574,870 on the same day.
Bot the companies are owned by other companies, which in turn are owned by a succession of other firms which ultimately lead to a controlling company called UK Investment Company 210 which is at least 75 per cent owned by Mr Dayan.
According to its latest accounts, the company currently has assets of £285m which are equal to its equity and liabilities.
It was said to have secured a loan of £261m in 2018 with repayment due in ten years, and an outstanding balance at the end of 2023 of £149million.
