Chinese back buying Queensland hotels, Coopers Hotel sold for $13.5m
Chinese investors have returned to the Queensland hotel market – albeit showing appetite for smaller assets – after buying two properties in Cairns and Rockhampton for a combined $22 million.
In the bigger of the two deals, Chinese firm Tsaos International has bought the 113-room Cairns Queenslander Hotel for almost $15 million in a deal that settled in December.
The freehold four-star hotel at 265-269 Lake Street in Cairns North was offered for sale by local Cairns builder Mike Spaulding, with Danny Betros from CBRE Hotels the appointed agent.
In the second deal, a private Chinese investment group bought the four-star Travelodge Hotel in Rockhampton for between $6 million and $7 million from the Tucker Box Hotel Trust, a joint venture between Mirvac and the NRMA.
The 74-room riverside hotel, which last sold for $7.9 million in 2006, was marketed by CBRE Hotels’ Hayley Manvell and Wayne Bunz. The hotel will continue to be operated by TFE Hotels under the Travelodge brand.
The two sales follow the recent Colliers International report on hotels sales in 2018, which recorded $1.8 billion worth of deals, but no investment by Chinese groups.
In another hospitality deal – the first for the year in the Sydney pub market – the Coopers Hotel in Newtown has been sold to Matt Williams of King Tide Hospitality Group for about $13.5 million.
The off-market deal was negotiated by Daniel Dragicevich and Sam Handy of HTL Property on behalf of ALNN Holdings, whose directors are Nathan David and Aaron David. It last sold for about the same price in 2011.
The Coopers Hotel features a first-floor bistro and beer garden and delivered annual revenues of $4.7 million in the last financial year.
“The successful purchaser will no doubt immediately seek to execute a strategic capital improvement program,” said Mr Handy.
HTL Property transacted in excess of $300 million worth of pubs in the second half of 2018.
