Ireland’s biggest hotel operator, Dalata, has explored opportunities in cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels and Amsterdam as it looks to grow its mainland European footprint, according to chief executive Dermot Crowley.

But while it continues to scout for locations, he said the UK remains the primary growth focus for the group and that it will remain opportunistic in terms of assets that present themselves.

Dalata operates under the Clayton and Maldron brands. Its first mainland European hotel opened in Dusseldorf last year, as a Clayton property, and is already cashflow positive.

Mr Crowley told the Irish Independent that there are “a lot of cities” that Dalata would like to have a presence in to help drive growth targets.

“When we look at Germany, we’ll only go into hotels that really make sense for us,” he said. “That hotel in Dusseldorf is 392 rooms and has really good conference facilities, is in very good physical shape, and is absolutely bang in the centre of the city.

“We’re looking for similar properties right around Germany especially, and we’re looking at other countries as well,” according to Mr Crowley, who said the group won’t be driven by fixed targets in terms of adding hotels to the portfolio.

“We’re looking at cities that have strong corporate and leisure,” he added. “We’ve looked at some opportunities but they haven’t come to pass in places like Amsterdam, Brussels; we’ve looked at something in Madrid and Barcelona.”

An opportunity in Berlin was also explored.

“It is competitive, but I’d be very hopeful that we will see more opportunities,” he said.

London, he said, remains a city that Dalata is very interested in. Last month, it announced that it has added to its presence in the city with the acquisition of a new hotel property in Finsbury, north London, for just over £44m (€50m). It is investing £2m in the property, which will operate as a Maldron.

Mr Crowley was speaking as Dalata reported a record set of results for 2022. Its revenue for the year was €516m, the first time it breached the €500m mark and 20pc higher than in 2019. Its adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the year was €184.3m, which is up 13pc compared with 2019.

The group added 1,900 hotel rooms in 2022 and has a pipeline of 1,333 more. It also plans to reintroduce a dividend later this year.

Soaring inflation prompted the group to take a fresh look at productivity. Mr Crowley said initiatives are not about making staff work harder, but more efficiently. He said the group understood a complete time motion study audit of how a room is cleaned, for example. That resulted in Dalata introducing cordless vacuum cleaners rather than ones with cords which take more time to set up.

“The task was to try and improve productivity without actually making people’s jobs harder,” he said.

The group is also introducing check-in pods across its hotels in the next four to five months, where customers can do an automated check-in if they wish, without having to engage with reception.