Glenn Piper’s Epochal Hotels buys Bermagui Beach Hotel for $20m
Emerging pub baron Glenn Piper has snapped up the Bermagui Beach Hotel in New South Wales for around $20 million in an off-market deal, adding to a $200 million hospitality portfolio that has expanded to nine coastal venues.
Dubbed “the next Justin Hemmes”, the rising hospitality star’s Epochal Hotels acquired the pub and accompanying 18-room hotel and motel in NSW’s Sapphire Coast from Yannis Gantner, who ran the venue for eight years before its sale.
Glenn Piper, chief executive at hospitality group Epochal Hotels and residential property investment firm Meridian Australia, said he and his family had fallen in love with Bermagui from their first visit.
“I hadn’t been to Bermagui beforehand, so it was the pub that brought me down,” Piper told The Australian Financial Review. “I just fell in love with the beautiful coast environment, vibrant community, village feel to it.
“It’s a beautiful township on the water, and that’s traditionally what Epochal Hotels looks for: iconic hotels on the coast.”
In the short term, he plans to add some “light enhancements” to the hotel, which looks over Horseshoe Bay Beach, eventually expanding its seating capacity.
“Each of our venues, we focus on the local community being the inspiration for what we’re going to offer,” he said. “We want to bring out a lot of history and celebrate it and have it more of a talking point within the hospitality industry.”
Yannis Gantner, the former owner of the Bermagui Beach Hotel, said growing the venue in the past eight years had been a joy and privilege.
“It’s now time for me to prioritise my family and other ventures,” Gantner said. “I have full confidence that Epochal Hotels will continue the custodianship of this iconic venue.”
Following Gantner’s transformation of the venue during his tenure, it won the Australian Hotels Association NSW Best Deluxe Pub Accommodation award in 2022, and was shortlisted in its best regional casual dining category.
The Bermagui deal follows Piper’s purchase of the Scarborough Hotel in NSW’s south coast in April 2024 from Rich Lister Bruce Gordon’s WIN Corporation. Before that Piper went on a buying spree in 2022, acquiring nearly $100 million worth of venues.
In 2022, the chief executive also purchased the leasehold of Hook Island in the Whitsundays with plans to build a luxury eco-retreat, currently in development.
While Piper said he wasn’t actively looking for any other venues to add to his portfolio right now, Epochal was always open to opportunities as coastal icons like the Bermagui Beach Hotel rarely came up.
“When something of this nature comes up, I definitely would be interested in looking at it,” he said.
Kate Macdonald, senior vice president at JLL’s Hotels and Hospitality Group and who managed the deal, said opportunities like the Bermagui hotel were rare, especially right on the beach.
“Interest is always going to be high for them,” Macdonald told the Financial Review. “[Yannis] completely transformed this pub, and now it’s an award-winning accommodation asset along with the pub.
“You can’t really find these ones at all any more. So it’s pretty exciting for Epochal because it really fits their portfolio to a T.”
Piper dived into the hospitality sector in 2020 when he purchased his first venue, the Harbord Hotel in Freshwater, NSW, adding to his repertoire after founding residential property investment firm Meridian Australia in 2011.
Epochal plans to unveil its new bar and live music venue, Bombies, above the Harbord Hotel in early June.
He also owns The Beach Hotel Merewether, Peregrin Restaurant in Newcastle, and The Commodore Hotel in McMahons Point which is set to reopen soon following its refurbishment. He purchased The Commodore Hotel for $29 million in 2023.
