Hawaiian hotel group eyes Queensland move
Hawaiian-based hotel group Outrigger, which once had strong links to Australia, hopes to re-enter the Queensland market. And it has flagged interest in the Whitsundays’ Hayman Island, which until recently was operated by the One & Only luxury resort group.
Controlled by private equity group KSL Capital Partners since December, Outrigger Enterprises Group has spent the past six months searching for hotels or resorts to buy or manage in Australia. Queensland is its main focus, although the company says it will also consider coastal properties in Victoria and NSW.
“We are very serious about getting back into Australia,” Outrigger’s Honolulu-based chief operating officer, Paul Richardson, says in an interview with The Australian.
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“We are very interested at looking at hotels along coastlines or islands. We are not a corporate hotel chain, we are not in the centre of cities, we are in resort and leisure locations.”
At its peak, Outrigger owned and operated 14 properties in Australia, predominantly in Queensland. It is keen to return to this market because it feeds Australian tourists into other resort properties it owns in Fiji and Hawaii.
“All our hotels in Waikiki benefit from our reputation in Australia. We are very strong in the Australian market into Waikiki.”
If Hayman Island was available, it is definitely something I would be interested in
All up, Outrigger controls 39 properties around the world, with the four it owns in Waikiki undergoing a $US100 million ($130 million) renovation. It operates another six hotels in Hawaii as well as resorts and hotels in the Maldives, Fiji, Mauritius and Thailand.
“As a private equity firm, KSL Capital Partners is probably one of the very few which specialises in hospitality, tourism and leisure products. They run a number of funds and basically they will look at any number of assets,” Richardson says.
“(But) it depends on the assets, the value in it, whether they can see growth, whether they can improve the capital value of the asset. It’s not a matter of how much, it’s finding the right assets at the right time to invest.”
It is understood Hayman’s owner, the Malaysian-owned Mulpha, has appointed agents to undertake an operator selection process to replace One & Only. Hotel sources said the 160-room island resort, which is closed for renovations after extensive damage caused by Cyclone Debbie, could be rebranded by one of the world’s larger operators, such as the American-owned Marriott or the French-owned Accor.
Richardson says Outrigger is also looking to acquire properties in Bali, Vietnam, Japan, the US west coast, Mexico and the Caribbean.
Outrigger, which was acquired by KSL from the original owners, the Kelley family, for an undisclosed sum last December, finally sold out of its remaining Australian operations in 2015.
It sold the management rights to four Queensland hotels to Mantra for an aggressive $29.5 million.
“If Hayman Island was available, it is definitely something I would be interested in,” Richardson says.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
