Multi-million-dollar deals ramp up hotels boom

AXA International has acquired four hotels in Sydney and Canberra for $330.4 million this week, in a major deal for the Australian sector.

And Event has announced the QT brand will make its South Australian debut in Adelaide in 2021 as part of a $180 million multi-storey mixed-use development at 62 Currie Street in the heart of the city.

[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”15046″ align=”right”]AXA is buying the Sydney Olympic Parks trio of the Novotel, Pullman and ibis hotels from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, all built in the late 1990s ahead of the Sydney Olympics and operated by Accor under a 50-year management agreement.

It has also snapped up the Novotel Canberra as part of the deal, the four-hotel purchase adding 831 rooms to the burgeoning portfolio of the international insurer’s asset management arm.

Spokesperson Kumar Kalyanakumar described the purchase as an opportunity to invest in a portfolio of “high quality and extremely well-located hotels as well as to build on our team’s strong track record of hotel investments”.

”While these assets already offer strong fundamentals in their own right, they are also set to benefit greatly from a number of value-adding initiatives we have earmarked which will be further enhanced by a forecast growth in tourism and a number of transport infrastructure improvements in Canberra and Western Sydney,” he told Fairfax Media.

Event’s QT Adelaide will feature 200 guest rooms, conferencing and events facilities and an expansive rooftop bar.

While still subject to final approvals, it will be the 11th hotel across Australia and New Zealand for the luxury design brand, which saw three properties ranked in Australia and New Zealand’s top 15 hotels in the latest Condé Nast Traveller Readers’ Choice Awards.

Event CEO Jane Hastings said: “We are excited to bring South Australia its very first QT Hotel, a key Australian market that has been a missing piece of our portfolio.

“Our new partnership with Auspac Networks Pty Ltd and Axiom Properties Limited will ensure a QT experience that will be a transformative project for the city of Adelaide.”

Karen Wales, director of hotels at Colliers International, says she expects to see many more development sales over the coming year.

”Hotel openings are expected to peak in 2019 with the opening of more than 6500 new rooms in the ten major accommodation markets, with Melbourne, Perth and to a lesser degree Sydney to see the majority of this supply increase,” Ms Wales told Fairfax Media.

”If they have not yet done so, existing owners will need to consider expediting the renovation cycle to compete with new supply.”