Mixed-use hotel and apartment projects gain momentum across Australia
Hotels designed to be a home away from home. Apartments that make residents feel like they’re on holiday all the time. Pools, landscaping, concierge services, rooftop lounges … never have residential units and tourist accommodation had so much in common.
“There’s now a lot of really good synergy between hotels and residential,” says Chris Ferreira, head of planning at Urban Property Group, which is launching a new project of three joint apartment and hotel developments. “They’re both about accommodation use.
“From a facilities point of view, too, there are real advantages to co-locating hotel and residential facilities in the same area, especially when they can be shared, to increase the options for everyone.”
The rise of hotel-style residential living
Hotels are increasingly appearing in residential buildings in well-connected areas of capital cities and regional growth areas, because operators see the demand and local councils want to create fresh local accommodation options.
Even in areas with no hotels, residential products are being designed and serviced like them anyway.
“Both are driven by lifestyle,” says Sam Kassis, of developer the Reve Group, which is delivering Nova Rêve – three residential towers with 361 apartments, a 143-room hotel and ground-level retail in Sydney’s Castle Hill.
“We’re finding people are now asking for a lot more amenities with their homes, because they want to be in an environment where they feel they’re always on holiday, especially when they’re travelling less. Having hotels in the same development also means they can both share the amenities. They work extremely well together.”
Meanwhile, many apartments developed without hotels are being planned and sold on a hotel model, with a concierge, rooftop pools, a club lounge, wellness facilities, a cinema, and street-level hospitality.
Why developers are combining hotels and apartments
Developer DASCO, for instance, is now working on a 479-apartment project across five buildings in Epping, Sydney, called Senso. Marketing director Sasha Wardan describes it as a “very hospitality-influenced” scheme.
“Everything about it is designed to create a leisure feeling, just as you would experience in a hotel,” she says. “It influences how residents arrive, how they move through the development and its landscape and even how they spend their downtime when they reach home.
“It’s about escape, wellbeing, a sense of space and local community – all the things you treasure on holiday. And you’ll have the sense of being surrounded by nature, too.”
The essentials of both the new hotels and the new homes are all based on convenience. All are being designed with plenty of retail space on the ground plane to provide cafes, restaurants, gyms, food shops and even co-working spaces.
This means guests and residents often don’t have to leave their sites to get to work.
Mixed-use projects reshape Sydney and regional hubs
Those areas that are newly hosting residential and short-term accommodation tend to be close to working hubs anyway, as well as good transport networks. Urban’s three mixed-use projects are planned for Sydney’s Parramatta, and Gosford and Newcastle north of the city.
In Parramatta, opposite the station, the SJB-designed development is proposed to include two towers of up to 48 storeys, a 217-key hotel, and 703 build-to-rent apartments. In Gosford, it’s a $247 million, two-tower DKO and Furtado Sullivan-designed project of 36 and 42 storeys on the fringe of the CBD, with 394 apartments and a 152-key hotel.
Newcastle is set to have a 43-storey tower with 171 hotel rooms, 245 apartments, 42 affordable homes and 99 co-living units.
“We’ve got some really well-located sites in major economic centres,” Ferreira says. “Residential is still our main focus, but in those centres with additional demand for visitor accommodation, we are happy to help support the local economy.
“Co-locating hotels and residential works well together; much better than, say, offices and residential when there can be problems with strata and people coming in and out of buildings.
“Additional facilities can also be shared, which is good and can make a project more economically viable.”
Lifestyle amenities drive buyer demand
At Nova Rêve, Kassis says that after talking to buyers of their last neighbouring project, Grand Rêve, as well as potential purchasers of the new one, they found huge demand for hotel-style amenities like a concierge, pool, working-from-home spaces, and breakout barbecue areas.
“So we added more to our plans, and a lot of people turned out to be pretty happy with what we were offering,” he says. “People kept telling us they wanted to simplify their lives and not have to drive to restaurants or parks or pools.
“That’s the same for hotel guests. They both like to have facilities on their doorstep instead.”
Buyers at Senso are looking for exactly the same things. They’re set to have two rooftop pools, an outdoor cinema, a gym, end-of-trip facilities and plenty of landscaped areas on completion in late 2028.
“I think after COVID, people put more emphasis on lifestyle and enjoying being at home doing all the things they’d normally do on holiday,” Wardan says. “Hospitality is now influencing apartments just as hospitality is being inspired by apartment design.”
