The 94-year-old luxury hotel, a popular venue for parties during the Cannes Film Festival, is one of seven InterContinental-branded hotels put on the market yesterday by IHG through Jones Lang LaSalle and Merrill Lynch.

The company, which is also selling its properties in Amsterdam, Budapest, Rome, Frankfurt, Madrid and Vienna, is hoping to sign a deal with a single buyer willing to retain IHG to operate the hotels under a long-term management contract.

However, it has not ruled out an outright sale of some or all of the hotels to get a better price. The 338-room Carlton is said to have attracted interest from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi billionaire who owns The Savoy in London and the George V in Paris.

IHG, which expects the sale process to take nine months to complete, said that shortly it would be announcing plans to sell an estimated 20 to 25 mid-market hotels in continental Europe under its Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Express by Holiday Inn brands.

The combined book value of the two tranches of hotels is about £600 million, of which the seven InterContinentals are thought to account for about £400 million.

The most valuable asset is the Carlton, which analysts reckon could fetch £150 million with a continuing management contract.

The sale of its European assets will take the total proceeds from asset disposals to about £2.8 billion since IHG was demerged from Six Continents in April 2003, leaving it with about £1 billion of assets that it plans to retain.

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