Covid-19 may have upended the world, but some things remain the same. The Ritz, one of London’s best-known hotels, has been sold to an undisclosed Qatari investor for 800 million pounds, Bloomberg reported on Friday. That’s not quite what it might theoretically have fetched before the coronavirus sent global asset values tumbling, but nor does it look a knockdown price.

Frederick Barclay, the 85-year-old billionaire who bought the hotel with his twin brother in 1995 and co-owns it with his family, might not agree. In a media statement earlier this month he threatened legal action against his sibling’s family if the Ritz was sold for less than 1 billion pounds. Still, such a price always looked quite ambitious. When the asset was put on the block in January – attracting interest from Saudi investors and LVMH (LVMHF) head Bernard Arnault – 800 million pounds was already seen as a more realistic valuation by property analysts.

It certainly looks rich enough, relatively speaking. The purchase values each of the 136 rooms at around 6 million pounds – two times higher than similar trophy hotel deals like the Maybourne hotels portfolio sale in 2015. That included the similarly high-end Claridge’s and Connaught in London but was valued at only 3 million pounds per room.

The Ritz has also been growing more slowly. Its 2018 turnover rose 2% year-on-year to 47 million pounds, according to Companies House disclosures, but the Savoy, another landmark London hotel, grew by 7% year-on-year. Since London hotel occupancy rates were last week estimated to be down as much as 76% year-on-year, Bernstein analysts said, it’s hard to see that the sellers have been hugely short-changed – especially given they bought it for only 75 million pounds 25 years ago.

As for the unnamed buyer, the fall in the value of sterling (FXB) softens the sense of epic overpaying. Qataris’ penchant for buying the most valuable London real estate has long been a way to combine safe-haven asset acquisition with eye-catching purchases that lend the tiny emirate some security in its hostile backyard by projecting its name globally. The valuation specifics tend to be less important. Given that between 2016 and 2018 yields on London deals shrank from 4.5% to below 2% for the glitziest deals, that’s probably just as well.