New hotel brand for nation’s capital
Canberra’s newest locally owned hotel group, Roundhouse Hotels, has announced it’s new brand at a launch held at the Diplomat Hotel this week.
The company is very excited about the future with a new alignment of the group which is already seeing a greater level of strategy and cohesion across the new brand. Hugh Cooke, managing director of Roundhouse Hotels said, “We’ve always strived to provide cost effective and comfortable four star hotels in Canberra. The fruits of this can already be seen by the awards won for Premier Hotel, Canberra at the recent ACT AHA awards”.
Rowland Fischer, general manager, Diplomat Hotel elaborated further on the new brand, “We like to think that a hotel should be somewhere that you can relax, and not just with leisure facilities. It’s a bit like reading a book in that familiar armchair in the living room. We want to create spaces where our guests feel able to relax and feel familiar, a space where they are not just known as a sir or madam, but remembered by their name.”
The company is locally owned and not governed by the agenda and styles of an international chain, which is a great strength perceived by the management team.
“Our hotels are moderately sized which allows flexibility in our ability to tailor services to suit each guest,” said Murray Emerton, award winning general manager, Premier Hotel Canberra and Parklands Apartment Hotel. “This also allows our team almost three times more contact with our guest population than they would ever have with a chain hotel. As the people that have the face to face contact with our guests every day, we like to think that our staff, are the one’s best equipped to determine how our guests like to be treated.”
While the company has grown four times in size over the past seven years, their sights are set for continued growth in the nation’s capital. “We’ve got some great hotels, with a vast amount of opportunity for refurbishment and development” said Mr Cooke. “Canberra is seeing so much investment in it’s offering to the leisure market with a magnificent new airport and high quality food and beverage offerings popping up all over town. The city is definitely set to grow, and we want to be there to grow with it.”
Roundhouse Hotels is made up of a group of local shareholders, striving to offer comfortable, cost effective four star accommodation in key locations around the nation’s capital. The company began with the development of the award winning Quality Inn Belconnen, now known as Premier Hotel Canberra in 1999. This was followed in 2007 by the takeover of the Parklands Apartment Hotel, which is a gem located in suburban Dickson. Following this the company purchased , Academy House, a venue providing, interstate and international university students, with accommodation through their study and the recently acquired Diplomat Hotel based in Griffith.
