Confidential sale prices revealed
Secret sale prices of Wellington’s CQ Hotels and Auckland’s Waldorf Stadium Hotel have been revealed in a real estate report by Colliers International as $40.88 million and $57.25m respectively.
Wellington’s CQ Hotels comprised the three-star Comfort Hotel and the four-star Quality Hotel on Cuba St and the sale was announced in February 2018.
CQ Hotels’ properties were sold by Rex Nicholls, who is the husband of former Wellington mayor Kerry Prendergast, and Sage Securities, which is owned by Phil McGaveston and four other shareholders.
The buyer, Naumi Hotels, intends to refurbish and rebrand the two hotels.
The 4.5-star Waldorf hotel sale was announced last October and billed as the largest hotel sale in the City of Sails in 12 years, though the price remained confidential.
The Colliers report outlined five notable hotel sales in 2018 in New Zealand. Hotels were tightly held and not often up for sale.
Regarding the Waldorf, it said: ‘‘The 178-unit strata title leasehold hotel was sold to Australian-based Mulpha Group for $57.25m . . . The sale generated a large volume of interest from both international and domestic investors and is the largest hotel transaction in New Zealand since 2015.’’
The VR Queen Street in Auckland, comprising an 80-room hotel, sold for $25m in March
2018.
The report also mentioned the former Amora Hotel in Wellington, a 192-room decommissioned hotel, but the sale price remained confidential. It was bought by Wellington’s Prime Property Group led by chief executive Eyal Aharoni.
The Best Western President Hotel in Auckland attracted significant interest. The majority interests in the hotel were sold to Pandey Hotel Corporation but the price paid stayed confidential.
The New Zealand hotel sector was performing strongly on the back of another recordbreaking year for tourism, with more than 3.85 million visitors in 2018.
With international tourism numbers forecast to grow at 4.6 per cent a year and reach 5.1 million by 2024, coupled with healthy levels of domestic demand and robust economic growth, the hotel sector would remain one of the topperforming assets classes over the short to medium term, the report said.
Strong buyer interest in key centres was still coming from offshore and domestic investors, but hotels for sale were scarce.
New hotel developments were under way, with 3187 rooms under construction.
Many announced hotel developments had not yet begun construction. The projects faced an Auckland Council targeted rate on commercial accommodation, high land and construction costs, consent delays and building sector constraints.