Queenstown hotel boom: three new hotels to ease accommodation pressure soon

Friday, 23 March 2018

The new Jucy Snooze Queenstown hotel, which is due to open in April.

As many as three new hotels with nearly 200 rooms between them will open in Queenstown next month, providing welcome relief for the squeezed accommodation sector.

Unprecedented visitor numbers have resulted in bed shortages and rising prices in the resort town - leading to concerns about possible damage to its reputation.

An artist's impression of the the Wyndham Garden hotel, which is scheduled to open in the Remarkables Park on April 19.

However, developers are stepping up. Figures from real estate firm Colliers International show five hotel projects, with more than 500 rooms between them, are currently under construction.

Three are due to open within weeks. The 60-room Jucy Snooze Queenstown, on the corner of Camp and Main streets, is scheduled to open in April.

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Safari Group's mixed-use Wyndham Garden development, in Remarkables Park, is due to open April 19, featuring 75 hotel beds and 55 residential apartments.

And the 54-room, Mi-pad hotel on Henry St is touted to open in either April or May. Stuff was unable to reach the developer to confirm an exact opening date.

The figures from Colliers show a further 426 rooms have been consented, 1917 are going through the consent or design processes, while 830 have been proposed.

Colliers Queenstown tourism broker Barry Robertson said it was important to note a large proportion of these - due to consenting or economic reasons - may not come to fruition.

However, high occupancy and average daily rates (a recent report from CBRE showed Queenstown topped the country at $225) meant 'it's probably never been more viable'.

In the year ending January 2018, the average occupancy rate for hotels in Queenstown was 81.8 per cent, up 2.1 per cent on the previous year, according to the latest Government statistics.

'There's a significant number of national and international brands and operators who want to have a presence in Queenstown,' Robertson said.

'If we had a 200-room hotel for sale today, we could probably sell it 10 times over.'

Australian-based Pro-invest Hotels Group started work this week on a 227-room Holiday Inn Express, due for completion late next year, on a prominent site bounded by Stanley, Sydney and Melbourne streets.

The company received resource consent for the development last November. However, the consent was appealed by the owner of the neighbouring Millennium Hotel, which withdrew its objection last week.

Safari Group, which developed the Ramada Hotel and Suites in the Remarkables Park, also has two more projects underway.

Director Robert Neil said the company was heading into mediation with the Queenstown Lakes District Council over its $56 million Ramada Queenstown development, on Frankton Rd.

Its subsidiary, Frankton Trading Trustee Company Ltd, had its resource consent application for the 131-room hotel, which also featured two penthouses and a restaurant, declined after a hearing in December.

The company then lodged an appeal with the Environment Court. Neil said the matter had been referred to mediation, and he was confident the outstanding issues could be resolved.

A council spokeswoman said the appeal would be considered by the council's appeals sub-committee on 29 March. She would not comment on mediation aside to note it was a statutory requirement.

'It'll get resolved and we'll get our resource consent,' Neil said, adding construction would begin late May with the aim of having the development finished by July or August next year.

The company was also behind another mixed-use project in the Remarkables Park. Neil said it had entered into a contract late last year to secure land for a $90m two-building development called Ramada Kawarau River.

The first building would feature 87 hotel rooms and 19 residential units, while the second would consist solely of 80 residential units. Construction was due to begin October, with a completion date of around March 2020.

'The demand in Queenstown outweighs supply, and the only way Queenstown can grow is to supply more stock,' Neil said.