Guests at Crown Group's new serviced apartments will order food from nearby restaurants

Crown Group director of hotels and suites Wayne Taranto said food and beverage was a critical part of their hotels.

“We chose to have in-room dining at our Parramatta hotel, and I suppose it benefits the corporate (traveller) market particularly if they’re working in-room,” he said.

The artist’s impression of the exterior of the Kent Street building.

“But what we’ve found is you’ve also got another portion – which is growing – which will order via UberEats as an example, or they’ll pick up the phone and order it online and get it delivered directly to the hotel.

“So we’re seeing an increase in people using Menulog, using UberEats and those various channels to order food. But then if they’re with a group travelling with colleagues or they’re entertaining, they like the options of different varieties of restaurants in close proximity.”

Crown Group has restored the 1880s Skittle Lane into a pedestrian thoroughfare and dining and retail precinct as a piece of the $330 million Arc development, of which Skye Suites is the hotel component.

The historic Skittle Lane was originally used by nearby warehouses and doubled as a bowling alley for sailors and soldiers.

Opening in November, food-and-beverage retailers in Skittle Lane will include Masuya Group, Ministry of Coffee, Upper East Side and a multi-level restaurant and bar Meu Jardim.

The pool area in the Arc development.

“It’s predominantly food and beverage and the reason for that is we want to create a precinct where we draw people – business and leisure – in on the weekend into our development,” Mr Taranto said.

And for those who don’t want to leave the premises, the hotel will also make it easy to get food from these restaurants delivered to reception.

“We will set up an arrangement with each of the restaurant operators to have the ability to charge back to the rooms,” Mr Taranto said.

“If they also wanted to order food, essentially over time, they can hopefully have it ordered, dropped off at reception and then the guests comes down to collect it.”

The thoroughfare will comprise an eight-storey atrium linking King, Kent and Clarence streets. A moving digital artwork will stretch 12 metres across the atrium and will change according to the sound and movement of the people beneath it.

Inside the rooms, guests will be able to use their smartphones as mobile keys to enter their serviced apartments, communicate with reception from the rooms using an app and “cast” entertainment apps such as Netflix on the television screen.

The rooftop design for the Kent Street development.

Lighting and airconditioning can also be switched on automatically through movement sensors in the room.

“Crowded marketplace”

Mr Taranto said Crown Group had entered the hotel market to “diversify the business”.

“We wanted to have mixed-use development where we own and operate the serviced apartments. We thought it was good timing in terms of the current demand and the Sydney market and that’s spread out to the greater Sydney region, greater west,” he said.

The hotel sector has been filling up with larger and smaller players interested in the lifestyle-hotel category.

“I think more so in the last few years, we’re now in a very crowded marketplace when it comes to brands. We’ve seen an evolution of lifestyle brands and now we’re seeing the major operators, the likes of Accor, Hyatt, Mariott bringing lifestyle brands into the market which is kind of an offshoot of their existing brands we know and love.”

Despite the competitive market, Mr Taranto still wanted to take the group’s hotel brand global.