Hilton Garden Inn at Adventure Parc Snowdonia, Dolgarrog

The Hilton Garden Inn sits inside the Adventure Parc Snowdonia resort, a former aluminium works site in Dolgarrog now built around an inland surf lagoon. The four-star hotel block has 106 rooms across four floors, with a spa, gym and lagoon-side restaurant. The site is in the Conwy Valley between Llanrwst and Conwy, served only by minor roads and the limited Conwy Valley railway line. There is no scheduled public bus service into the village.

In late October 2022 the Manston processing centre near Ramsgate in Kent was holding more than 4,000 small-boats arrivals against a 1,600-person design capacity, with diphtheria reported among residents. The Home Office began moving people out by coach to hotels around the country, including the Hilton Garden Inn at Adventure Parc Snowdonia^[1]Press.

On 6 November 2022 Aberconwy MP Robin Millar publicly disclosed that the Hilton Garden Inn was being used to house asylum seekers with immediate effect. Weddings and events at the hotel were cancelled at minimal notice and rooms became unavailable to book until at least Spring 2023. Millar described the location as unsuitable, isolated and unsupported by the appropriate services^[1]Press.

Subsequent reporting by the North Wales Pioneer indicated that residents at the site had come from Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt and had been transferred from Manston. The same coverage cited a related figure of around 86 to 87 asylum seekers having been bussed to the village^[4]Press.

Conwy County Borough Council confirmed it had not been given advance notice by the Home Office of the accommodation plans. Council leader Charlie McCoubrey called the rural location wholly inappropriate to house vulnerable people and said the village of Dolgarrog lacked the basic public services and transport connections that asylum seekers needed to reach Conwy and Llandudno safely^[2]Council.

Within days Conwy confirmed it was actively considering legal action against the Home Office over the use of the Hilton for asylum accommodation, alongside parallel injunction bids elsewhere in the United Kingdom that autumn. The council ultimately did not issue proceedings, and the Home Office wound the contract down voluntarily in early 2023^[3]Council.

The North Wales Pioneer reported that the hotel was decommissioned and reopened to paying guests on 6 February 2023, after roughly three months of asylum use^[4]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5], a 106-room hotel run at full asylum occupancy implies headline taxpayer exposure of about £18,020 per night. Across the roughly three-month asylum-use period at Adventure Parc Snowdonia, cumulative headline taxpayer exposure was on the order of £1.6 million. The May 2025 NAO contract review put the average per-hotel run rate across the wider portfolio at about £5.84 million per year^[6]NAO.