Perth’s next hotel boom could be staged in the suburbs with hotel giant Marriott International leading the charge by opening its first Courtyard brand in WA in the Murdoch Health and Knowledge Precinct this week.
The new 150-room offering in Perth’s biggest employment hub outside the CBD marks a continued expansion by the leading hotel group into urban growth areas.
Marriott International’s Australia, NZ and Pacific area vice-president Sean Hunt told The West Australian Perth could expect to see more hotels cropping up in suburban precincts in the future as soaring costs and limited land supply pushed developers out of the CBD to fringe areas.
“In Melbourne, we’ve got hotels that are 20km outside of Melbourne, but they’ve got their own drivers — a shopping centre, commercial or industrial — so I think you’ll see more of this and it’s something that in more mature markets in Australia, and in Europe and the United States, is very common,” he said.
The Courtyard by Marriott is one of the group’s mid-priced brands and the fifth offering by the group in Perth, which includes the Ritz-Carlton and the Westin in the CBD.
“I see a time in the not-too-distant future when we’ll have 10 hotels in WA,” Mr Hunt said.
The hotel’s general manager James Illing said it had an impressive 60 per cent occupancy rate on its opening day and 80 per cent on its second.
“There are a lot of people already here from regional areas, doing post and pre procedures, and that convenience of being on the doorstep of the health precinct is such a powerful thing — to have that comfortable location that’s almost a base or escape from whatever trauma are they going through, it’s just one less thing they have to worry about,” he said.
Tourism Council WA chief executive Evan Hall said he was delighted to see Courtyard by Marriott address a dire need for more investment in suburban areas.
“Marriott’s the biggest hotel company in the world so we’re really pleased to see this sort of investment in suburban areas, because we haven’t had a lot in Perth, whereas we did get a big boost in CBD hotels midway through the last decade,” he said.
“Hotels are trading well and we seem to have enough CBD hotels but the real need without a doubt is this sort of product in the suburbs. for which there is absolute demand, and in particular in regional areas,” he added.
Mr Hall said Perth had one of the lowest levels of investment in purpose-built short-stay accommodation in Australia — a figure that has been greatly impacted by Airbnb.
The latest Tourism Investment Monitor 2022-23 report shows Perth had $400 million invested across six projects, compared with Sydney at $2.9 billion across 36 projects, and Melbourne at $1.9b across 18 projects.
Mr Hall said the WA Government’s Short-Term Rental Accommodation Register will go a long way in addressing this underinvestment.
