Short family exits Seabreeze Beach Hotel amid pub sell-down

Short family matriarch and vendor Ros Short said her entire family had enjoyed a long and favourable history with the Seabreeze Hotel.

The veteran pub-owning Short family have shed another asset in the form of the popular Seabreeze Beach Hotel at picturesque South West Rocks on the NSW Mid-North Coast, with a price tag estimated in the $30m to $35m range.

The buyer is the privately owned Hunter Hotel Group, which operates an impressive portfolio of hotels around the Newcastle and NSW Central Coast region.

The sale price was not disclosed but is believed to be up to $35m in a deal negotiated by HTL Property’s Andrew Jolliffe.

The move comes amid a run of pub deals including Redcape offloading two Sydney pubs earlier this week.

Owned by the Short family since 2001, the beachside institution and adjoining commercial property holdings were sold via an expression of interest sale process.

W. Short Hospitality owns and operates some of NSW’s most iconic pubs and hotels including The Australian Heritage Hotel and The Glenmore in The Rocks, The Royal in Leichhardt, The Tudor in Redfern, Toormina Hotel in Coffs Harbour, Misfits at The Redfern, The Sawtell Hotel in Sawtell and Moonee Beach Hotel in Moonee Beach.

Short family matriarch and vendor Ros Short said her entire family had enjoyed a long and favourable history with the Seabreeze Hotel.

Owned by the Short family since 2001, the beachside institution and adjoining commercial property holdings were sold via an expression of interest sale process.

“Our marketing for the hotel sought to draw parallels with other beachfront institutions such as those located in Bondi, Manly or Byron Bay; and that is precisely how the market responded to the opportunity.

HTL Property national pubs director Dan Dragicevich said true beachfront hotels such as the Sea Breeze were emblematic of Australian surf culture in its purest form; and are unsurprisingly very rare and therefore aggressively sought after.

The multi-level hotel offering comprises a state of the art bar, restaurant, drive-through bottle-shop, gaming and substantial accommodation offering.

The complex also includes well-tenanted commercial property holdings as well as an existing approved development application.

“While the transaction volumes have traded at a discount to the corresponding period, strategic acquisitions and divestments remain of the utmost importance to all investors who take a view of the market that exceeds the short term,” said HTL managing director Andrew Jolliffe said.

W. Short Hospitality is owned by Ros Short, her son Martin Short and daughter Paris Ballantyne.

Separately, her other son, Fraser Short, had a long association with the pub-owning Laundy family but that was disbanded earlier this year when the Laundy Hotel Group, headed by the billionaire pub baron Arthur Laundy, bought five hotels from Fraser Short including the Watsons Bay Hotel in Sydney in a landmark $300m deal.