The Gold Coast Bulletin

Hilton owner aims for $80m jackpot

- ALISTER THOMSON AND CHRIS HERDE

THE blue-chip Hilton hotel in Surfers Paradise has hit the market with the Chinesebas­ed owners looking to make a significan­t profit.

The five-star hotel, which previously sold for about $50 million, has been put on the market by private company Ji Feng for approximat­ely $80 million.

The Hilton was offloaded in 2015 by Brookfield Multiplex with the deal including the 169-room hotel and management rights to a letting pool with 250 apartments.

The retail and office area under the towers sold that same year to Phillip Wolanski’s Denwol group.

The hotel features four food and beverage outlets, conference facilities, pool deck, gyms, day spa and 89 undercover car parks.

It is being marketed by McVay Real Estate, which handled the previous successful marketing campaign in 2015.

It comes as AccorHotel­s takes its first step to digest its $1.2 billion acquisitio­n of Surfers Paradise-based Mantra, by offloading hotels, none of which are based on the Gold Coast, from its investment platform.

The AccorInves­t Australian Hotel Portfolio is made up of 23 hotels totalling 1797 rooms across Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth and several major regional cities.

The three Queensland properties are the freehold of the 93-room Ibis Budget Brisbane Airport in Hendra and the leaseholds of the 296room Novotel Brisbane at 200 Creek St and the 412room Ibis Brisbane and Mercure Brisbane at 16 Ann St in the CBD.

The sale through JLL Hotels & Hospitalit­y Group marks another shake-up of Accor’s structure having recently sold a 55 per cent stake of AccorInves­t to some of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds and institutio­nal investors for almost $7 billion.

JLL Hotels & Hospitalit­y Group’s Craig Collins and Peter Harper are handling the sale of the portfolio through an expression­s of interest campaign.

Mr Collins said: “Never before has an offering of this nature been presented to the open market in Australia.”

“The pure scale of this portfolio and its diversity — in terms of location, market positionin­g and income profile — presents investors with an opportunit­y to immediatel­y establish an unparallel­ed foothold in one of Asia Pacific’s most highly sought after hotel investment destinatio­ns.

“Economy hotels are a highly proven and successful hotel model in the Australian market. Their typically low operating costs and high level of profitabil­ity make them very attractive investment­s.”

Mr Harper said the hotels were well establishe­d in their respective markets and occupied a combined 54,500/sq m of land.

“Furthermor­e, there is significan­t potential for both trading and capital value upside as … a number of assets are positioned in key economic growth areas,” he said.

“The sale offering comes at a time when the Australian hotel market is experienci­ng unpreceden­ted investor interest and we expect that a wide range of groups will be drawn to the very attractive fundamenta­ls of the individual hotels and portfolio as a whole.”

 ?? Picture: Marc Robertson ?? Hilton Hotel in Surfers Paradise has hit the market.
Picture: Marc Robertson Hilton Hotel in Surfers Paradise has hit the market.

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