Melbourne’s Southbank to welcome Australia’s first YOTEL
Australia’s perceived lack of affordable luxury hotels has spurred international management group and disrupter YOTEL to launch its first Australian property.
The British-based YOTEL has teamed up with Cornerstone Property, which will develop and own a 244-room hotel in Melbourne’s Southbank after recently buying the 63-69 City Rd site.
YOTEL claims its rates will be 20-25% below the cost of local premium hotel rates.
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YOTEL chief executive Hubert Viriot says the British-based company, whose shareholders include the Talal Jassim Al-Bahar Group, Starwood Capital Group and United Investment Portugal, is serious about Australia and is looking for development sites in Sydney and Brisbane.
Viriot says since opening the YOTEL in Singapore he has been looking to announce an Australian hotel and not only wants to establish on the eastern seaboard, but also in Adelaide and Perth.
Viriot says YOTEL, which has 30 hotels operating or in development in cities and airports such as London Gatwick, London Heathrow, Paris Charles de Gaulle and Amsterdam Schiphol, is signing two-decade-plus management agreements with hotel owners here in Australia.
YOTEL chief executive Hubert Viriot.
“We are here to build long-term relationships of 20 years and above,” Viriot says. “We have no interest in doing short-term contracts. Australia makes sense for us; it is a very sophisticated market, it’s very obviously a feeder market for our hotels in Singapore and the United Kingdom.”
Viriot says YOTEL hotels could be developed on greenfield sites or are suitable as office conversions, which it is doing in San Francisco, Glasgow and Edinburgh, which opens next week.
“We have just done our first hotel conversion in Washington DC, where we have taken an existing 30-year-old hotel, which was a Holiday Inn, and we will refurbish it over the American winter from November to March.”
The Melbourne YOTEL is the first hotel project for Cornerstone Partners Group, a hospitality asset owner and developer with offices throughout Malaysia, Taiwan and Australia.
“Our group is focused on finding gaps in the hospitality markets across Asia-Pacific. In Australia, we believe there is an avenue for disruptive brands such as YOTEL, which offer something completely new to the market,” says Cornerstone Partners Group chief executive Jason Chong in a statement.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
