Dubai World To Buy Golf Resort in Scotland

Dubai World, the state-owned investment group managing more than $100 billion, agreed to buy Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.'s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland to expand its Leisurecorp sports unit.

Leisurecorp will pay $108 million for Turnberry, the host venue for the 2009 British Open Championship, it said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Starwood will manage the five-star resort for at least 30 years as part of an agreement that's expected to close October 31.

"You only have to look out across Turnberry's Ailsa Course towards the landmark lighthouse to know that the resort is one of the world's great golf destinations," the chief executive officer of Leisurecorp, Alan Rogers, said in the statement.

Leisurecorp is planning the world's richest golf championship in Dubai next year with a $10 million prize as the climax to the European Golf Tour as the Persian Gulf emirate seeks to attract 15 million visitors a year by 2015. The top 60 players on the European Tour's Race to Dubai will qualify for the tournament in November.

Founded in 2006, the company owns the residential Jumeirah Golf Estates project in Dubai, South Africa's Pearl Valley Golf Estates, and shares in Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Troon Golf, the course management and marketing company.

Turnberry, on Scotland's southwest coast, has two 18-hole golf courses, Ailsa and Kintyre, plus a 9-hole course, Colin Montgomerie-branded academy, and 219-room hotel. The hotel is due to close later this year for refurbishment to re-open ready for the 2009 Open Championship.

Starwood bought the 800-acre resort in 1997 from Nitto Kogyo Co. of Japan for $51.5 million.