Hotel capacity expands in tourism dearth

AUCKLAND: Timing is significant, so what bad fortune for two large new CBD Auckland hotels run by the same Sydneyhead quartered business to be opening in the next four weeks.

Prepandemic, the city was stretched for guest space. Now, an extra 253 new hotel rooms will be added to the already swelling stock of empty rooms after the completion of large Britomart and Wynyard Quarter projects.

TFE Hotels (Toga Far East Hotels) New Zealand will operate and manage both places, within about 1km of each other: the Hotel Britomart opening today and Travelodge Hotel Auckland Wynyard Quarter opening on October 28.

Dean Humphries, Colliers International’s director of hotels for New Zealand and the South Pacific, said the largest number of new hotels built simultaneously in the city at any one time would result in six hotels opening between August and October.

All up, those CBD properties worth more than $1 billion opening in that short space of time are:

The new fivestar waterfront 190room $300 million Park Hyatt, Halsey St, by

China’s Fu Wah, opened midSeptember;

The new 194room Sudima Auckland City on the Wellesley/ Nelson St corner, by Hind Management;

The 104room Hotel Britomart near the waterfront by Peter Cooper’s Cooper and Company;

Travelodge Hotel Wynyard, a 154room hotel;

QT Auckland, a 150room hotel opening in a former Viaduct Harbour office building;

The Mercure Auckland Queen St, a 96room hotel in an existing building. — The New Zealand Herald