The cancellation of Vector Hospitality’s flotation has sparked a flood of interest from private property investors keen to buy the £2.6 billion of hotel assets that were to have been acquired by the real estate investment trust (Reit), The Times has learnt.

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which was due to sell 15 hotels to Vector for £1.07 billion, is expected to be the first to complete a deal after receiving serious expressions of interest from would-be purchasers.

The favourite to buy its hotels is Robson Asset Management (RAM), a new investment vehicle set up by Jeremy Robson, who quit RBS last month after eight years with the bank.

RAM is believed to be bidding about £1.1 billion for the group of hotels, which include 12 Hiltons, the Cumber-land Hotel in London and the Park Inn at Heathrow.

Mr Robson, who was head of principal finance for RBS, knows the hotels well because he acquired them for the bank and was one of the architects of Vector Hospitality.

His new venture is understood to have backing from several Israeli investors, including Igal Ahouvi Group, which was part of the consortium that bought 47 UK Marriott hotels from RBS for £1.1 billion in April.

In his first interview since the flotation’s failure last week, Richard Balfour-Lynn, Vector’s principal director, told The Timesthat there had been interest in all the assets that the Reit was due to buy, including those owned by his own vehicles, the Alternative Hotel Group and Marylebone Warwick Balfour.

“All of us are getting offers,” he said. “These are good assets and there is huge demand for good assets. I’m considering a number of options, but I’m letting the dust settle and catching my breath so I can decide in a calm fashion.”

Despite the shunning of the flotation by institutional investors, Mr Balfour-Lynn claimed that the hotels could easily be sold for more than their net asset value (NAV) in a competitive auction.

He said that although none of the asset owners was under any pressure to sell, “the reality is that if you put those assets on the market you’d get more than the NAV”.

Mr Balfour-Lynn said that the failure of the flotation last week, even after a last-minute price cut, was disappointing, given the apparent enthusiasm of institutions in the early stages. He played down suggestions that it could be revived, saying: “Never say never. It was a nice idea but it failed.”

He conceded that concerns over his own roles within the complex management structure had been an issue, but insisted: “If the market had not gone into freefall in the last week, this deal would have been done. No question there was concern over the structure, but the issue of conflicts had been appropriately dealt with at a very early stage.”

Mr Balfour-Lynn called into question the negative statements made by some institutions during the bookbuilding. “There is no question that quite early on in the process the institutions tried to push the price down – which is quite normal and what they should do – and to do that they focused on the structure,” he said.

“But what is interesting is that some people who were talking publicly about this were also putting in orders [for shares]. I sat there biting my tongue.”

He said that although going through the initial public offering process had been “very educational”, he felt that the bookbuilding system was “a bit of nonsense”, adding: “I probably wouldn’t do it again.”

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