Former Wallaby leads charge as $80m of NSW pubs snapped up

Leading the charge from the front row was 40-cap Wallaby Mr Young, who paid around $40 million to buy the Royal Hotel at Ryde in north-west Sydney from hotelier Patrick Gallagher.

The deal adds to Mr Young’s growing stable of Sydney pubs that includes the Concord and Five Dock hotels. Dan Dragicevich and Andrew Jolliffe from HTL Property brokered the off-market deal.

“The Royal at Ryde follows our 2020 acquisition and recent refurbishment of the Illinois Hotel, and fits perfectly into our geographical wheelhouse,” said Mr Young.

“Strategically, we are satisfied that we have now assembled a complementary mix of full-service hotel offerings in a demographic we know well.”

“The Royal has always been a robust and proven cash flow generator, and as such it deserved a sale price commensurate with the material barriers to entry, including lack of available stock and the weight of investmentcapital looking for a foothold in the marketplace,” Mr Dragicevich said.

In Toukley on the NSW Central Coast, former Rothschild managing director David Kingston offloaded the Beachcomber Hotel for $20 million in a deal brokered by JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group’s John Musca.

The Beachie, which Mr Kingston has owned for 25 years, was acquired by the Gravanis brothers’ Oscars Hotel Group, one NSW’s largest hospitality groups, with a portfolio of more than 30 venues.

The Beachcomber hotel, which sits between two Great Lakes and the Pacific Ocean, offers nearly 100 metres of absolute lake frontage and has its own private pier.

The sprawling complex will soon be relaunched as a four-star, 80-room resort offering multiple indoor and outdoor bars, restaurants and function rooms.

“The weight and diversity of capital remains strong for the hotels nationally at present and, although not indiscriminate, suitors are evident across the board for investments within the highly protected and resilient asset class,” Mr Musca said.

Robin Hood changes hands

In Orange in regional NSW, the Marshall family sold its long-held Robin Hood Hotel for about $19 million to a new regional fund set up andmanaged by Sydney hotelier Jason Marlow and his wife Peta.

The hotel, which stands on a large land holding of 32,700 square metres, offers all forms of traditional hotel revenue streams including a bistro, bar and drive-through bottle shop.

With an existing suite of metropolitan hotels in his stable, Mr Marlow said he was looking to expand his private operations to incorporate key hospitality assets in regional centres.

“We have identified Orange as a geographical location with multiple revenue inputs and an underlying economic base which we feel will sustain high quality offerings such as the Robin Hood well into the future,” he said.

HTL Property brokered the sale of the Robin Hood and said it was a record for the region