By Brent Bosker

Ramada to change hands

Nov 16, 2010 | 12:39 PM

The Ramada hotel in Prince Albert will be under new ownership on Friday.

Current owner Josef Tesar agreed to sell his hotel to Jeff Kim, a hotel owner in Lethbridge, Alberta.

After 20 years of ownership, Tesar said he never seriously considered selling the hotel up until just recently.

“Since (we became a) Ramada International franchise we had four offers just in the last four months and many offers prior to that,” he said.

We had these offers, so we had to look at it, Tesar said.

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“As you know you always have to have a strategy to get into business and you have to always have a strategy to exit the business in some way.”

But Tesar and his family won’t be leaving the business or Prince Albert.

They will continue operating the Belly-Up Bar and Grill and have plans to build a 100 room hotel in Saskatchewan, he said.

Tesar won’t say where he plans to build this hotel, but said it will be a new franchise to Saskatchewan.

“I would like to bring another franchise, national franchise to western Canada and Saskatchewan, that’s never been done before.”

The Microtel Inns and Suites is the number one mid-sized hotel franchise in the United States, said Tesar.

“We’re in the process of doing that — and we have many sites … in Saskatchewan approved by the Microtel people.”

Tesar said he wants to thank everyone for their support over the years.

“Personally I’d like to thank everybody we ever met in the 20 years of the business in Prince Albert and of course we’d like to say thanks our long term employees.”

The Kim family takes ownership of the hotel and the vacant property adjacent to the hotel Friday.

“We wish them all the best and I hope they are going to do another 20 years of business in Prince Albert,” said Tesar.

The hotel was formally known as the South Hill Inn and Suites before it became a Ramada franchise last year.

bbosker@panow.com