Perth site released for city hotel development
The State Government has released land in the Perth CBD for a hotel development in a move to help ease the critical shortage of beds.
The site of the Fire and Emergency Services Authority headquarters on Hay Street and a former medical clinic behind it, is to be redeveloped.
The Tourism Minister, Kim Hames, says Perth will need an extra 1,900 hotel rooms by 2020.
"We're getting started is the key point," he said.
"This is the first off the rank and as you can see, a massive site over 7,000 square metres of inner city space to allow for hotel development."
The site can fit two hotels with up to 300 beds each.
The Australian Hotels Association's CEO Bradley Woods says it will help ease the city's chronic shortage of hotel rooms.
"Perth is experiencing room revenue rates and occupancies that are exceeding even Sydney at the moment," he said.
"It's one of the highest occupancy cities in the world and the announcement of the Government to allocate this substantial land site is a very important step to getting a better equilibrium between demand and supply for hotel rooms."
Dr Hames says the lack of rooms is costing Perth hundreds of millions of dollars .
"There is a significant cost for lost opportunity for tourists not being able to come here because of our current high levels of occupancy," he said.
Tourism WA's James Hewitt says the city is losing up to $660 million every year in visitor spending.
"I think we've had about 223 new rooms developed in Perth over the last six years, none of them have been new hotels," he said.
He says the exorbitant rates charged for Perth's hotel rooms are directly related to the shortage.
"There is a steadily increasing demand for hotel rooms in Perth, we haven't seen any new supply coming on stream," he said.
"It's a simple supply and demand equation that room rates go up to reflect a lack of supply."
There are about 5,000 hotel beds in Perth's CBD.
Mr Woods says there are times when people find it hard to book a room.
"One of the key things in the Perth market at the moment is that people need to book well in advance, sometimes several weeks in advance to assure they're given the quality of accommodation or a particular hotel they would normally seek," he said.
The Opposition Leader Mark McGowan has welcomed the release but says the Government needs to do more.
"Obviously there's huge demand but we haven't had a new hotel since Holiday Inn opened in late 2005," he said.
"You need to free up sites but you also need to aggressively approach those big operators to get them to come to Perth.
"Now if that means going and seeing them in their headquarters, go and see them."
Expressions of interest have been called for and the development is expected to take about three years.
Source: ABC News, 23 May 2012
