Pub baron Jim Knox to sell $50m Riverina hotel
Regional pub baron Jim Knox is selling The Gem Hotel in the NSW Riverina region – and with hopes of collecting $50 million or more, the transaction could be among the largest for a regional country pub to date.
The property price guide for the Griffith pub had been benchmarked against some of the largest hotel sales outside the capital cities, including the Robin Hood Hotel in Orange, which sold for $47.4 million, the Windsor Castle Hotel in East Maitland for $50.5 million, and the Port Macquarie Hotel for $53 million. All of those sales were in 2022.
Knox has been reducing his investment in the Riverina as he consolidates his interests and has already sold the Area Hotel in Griffith. But he said that there was “no town like Griffith” and that he had loved his time operating The Gem.
“It is truly an outlier of opportunity in regional Australia. Aspiration that delivers like no other town in the country,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
“I have been a long-term investor in Griffith and the Riverina, with our irrigation and civil earthmoving operations, and it is just a town that never goes backwards.
“We have slowly been working towards moving our business interests back to the Northern Tablelands, where we live. That is what prompted the sale last year of the Area Hotel.”
Knox has a significant hotel portfolio of about a dozen venues including the Port Macquarie Hotel, which he purchased for $53 million in 2022.
The pub baron more than tripled his money when he sold the Area Hotel last year for about $30 million after purchasing it for $8 million in 2019. The two-storey venue on Banna Avenue was snapped up by Golden Vault Hotels’ Trent Middleton.
Knox said that while metropolitan and coastal hotels were typically viewed as the most desirable assets in the industry, the returns to be made from country town pubs should not be overlooked.
“We also tend to find loyal staff that stick to our business and this offers an elevated customer experience,” he said. “Regional NSW will always reward operators that invest meaningfully into their towns, as they know that it might be a while before the next guy comes along to give the joint a freshen up.
“Strong customer demand with limited competition has been the reason that I continue to focus on regional areas.”
The listing adds to Australia’s booming regional pub scene.
Last month, businessman Scott Didier bought The Beach Hotel in Byron Bay for $140 million from Redcape Hotel Group, marking the second-highest price paid for a pub on record.
Brokering The Gem is HTL Property’s Andrew Jolliffe and Xavier Plunkett, whose agency handled more $200 million worth of regional hospitality assets in May alone, an indication of how much interest there is in the sector.
“The local [Griffith] economy is defined by full employment, high household incomes, significant government and private infrastructure investment, and a large itinerant workforce – all highly attractive drivers for the most astute hospitality operators,” Jolliffe said.
“There are basically four hotels for 32,000 people in the area, so that is an extraordinary ratio.”
The Gem’s annual revenue exceeds $13 million, largely driven by high-margin gaming and its accommodation offering.
The town has a gross regional product of $2.7 billion and its key industries are viticulture, agriculture, food processing and manufacturing.
