OYO Rambler Inn, Portstewart

The Rambler Inn is a coastal hotel in Portstewart on the north Antrim coast in County Londonderry, in the Causeway Coast and Glens borough. The site was operated under the OYO budget hotel franchise and contracted by the Home Office for asylum-seeker contingency accommodation as part of the small Northern Ireland hotel cluster overseen by Mears NI.

In January 2023 Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council published an Asylum Seekers Briefing as a formal council paper. It confirmed that 32 people were staying in the Rambler Inn hotel building as their claims for refugee status were processed, with 45 places available and a short term Home Office contract in place^[1]GOV.UK.

Derry Now reported on the integration of asylum seekers housed at the Rambler Inn with the local Portstewart community, with churches, charities and individual volunteers providing English classes, food and clothing support during the contingency contract^[2]Press.

Following the August 2025 Epping migrant hotel court ruling, four Northern Irish councils, including Causeway Coast and Glens, opened enquiries about their own contingency hotels. The News Letter named the Rambler Inn in Portstewart as one of the sites under local scrutiny, with the council seeking clarification on Home Office obligations, including for a possible second NI asylum hotel^[3]Press^[4]Press.

At the £170 per person per night Migration Observatory benchmark^[5]and a steady headcount of around 32 residents, accommodation contract value runs at roughly £5,440 per night and about £2 million per year. Smaller NI contingency hotels typically have higher per person overheads than the May 2025 NAO contract review average of £5.84 million per year per hotel^[6]NAO.