Hotels to kick some goals in coming weeks
With the football finals next weekend for the Australian Football League and the National Rugby League, hotels are getting ready for a busy week.
While there are the ever-present transport strike threats and issues of price "gouging" in all types of accommodation, all roads to Melbourne and Sydney will be hectic.
Big sport weekends are the big breadwinners for the hotel sector and is one of the reasons more than $2.5 billion of assets has changed hands in the year to date.
Savills Hotels says the low Australian dollar, rapid growth of inbound tourism and increased business confidence have led to an increase in the average hotel-room rates throughout Australia of 3.7 per cent with, Sydney and Melbourne being the standout performers.
Savills Hotels director Vasso Zographou said the sports events in Melbourne and Sydney in the coming months, with the football and spring racing carnival, demand for hotels rooms will hit a peak.
For the AFL, the two preliminary finals are being played on the West Coast in Perth against two Melbourne-based teams. The following weekend the victors will head back to the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
As a result, hoteliers on the east and west coast are set to benefit from an influx of AFL fans for these finals games for the next two weeks.
Mantra Group hotels director of revenue and distribution Luke Moran said unlike the high-flying action of AFL, managing hotel room inventory during footy finals season was more like a game of chess.
"It's literally a week-by-week equation balancing the wins and losses of the teams with demand for rooms – and, from a tourism perspective, we certainly hope for interstate teams to feature," Mr Moran.
He said with the AFL action in Perth, Mantra's two hotels had quickly filled all 263 rooms as North Melbourne and Hawthorn fans flock across the Nullarbor.
Other hoteliers have also said the same issue has occurred and are trying to accommodate all requests.
In Melbourne, where Mantra offers seven CBD hotels, interstate bookings spiked once it was confirmed Perth teams had secured two chances of making the Grand Final. Optimistic Perth fans have all but filled the 1080 Mantra hotel rooms, with the hotel group reporting one of the most successful Grand Final weekends to date.
Mantra Group will add another 86 rooms to the mix next year when it opens the new Peppers Docklands hotel adjacent to Etihad Stadium.
Savills Hotels valuations and consultancy director Adrian Archer said property investors should play close attention to hotels' key performance indicators because hotels are able to react to market forces daily and can be one of the earliest indicators of a change in market conditions due to the number of meetings, conferences and movement of corporate clientele through their doors.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, Carolyn Cummins, 25th September 2015
Originally published as: Hotels to kick some goals in coming weeks
