SYDNEY — Market conditions are putting stress on hotel owners and operators in Australia, investment specialists said at the Australia-New Zealand edition of the Hotel Investment Conference Asia-Pacific.
However, Michael Simpson, managing director at CBRE Hotels, said the “worst is almost over” for Australia's hotel sector.
The “worst” includes high interest rates and the perception of higher risk in hotel investment and development, but stress on hotel owners and operators is coming from several directions.
Karen Wales, head of hotel transaction services at business advisory Colliers, said there are “pockets of stress” and pockets that are “probably not distress” in Australia's hotel transactions market. Distress is often associated with difficulty in meeting financial obligations, such as loan payments, that results in owners selling hotels at discounted prices.
She said after a “long road” of pandemic recovery, emotional stress is still palpable at the ownership level.
“Alongside that, there’s stress in development deals and the level of counterparty risk that’s coming into some development deals, particularly when you don’t have a pre-commit on the takeout. So, we've got operational risk, counterparty risk, development risk, financial risk, construction risk. It depends on who you’re working with, so those can all be abated, but I think there is an elevated sense of risk,” she said.
“The other [risk] probably in the operating space is leases. We’ve got a number of assets that are over-rented, and I think if you look at the assets that are coming to market, there’s a higher volume of leased assets,” Wales added.
Gus Moors, managing director of hotels and hospitality at advisory JLL, said debt is causing the most stress.
“It’s primarily in the new developments because they’re yet to ramp up if they’re stabilizations. They’ve been hit with cost escalation through the construction phase, and they’re probably in some cases new players in the marketplace. There's uncertainty from a banking perspective how these new players are going to cope with the current headwinds in the cycle,” he said.
CBRE Hotels' Simpson said while stress has been palpable, the Australian hotel industry did not expect to recover as fast as it has from the pandemic. But the recovery is not equal, he said.
“Australia is not a homogenous market, and markets will recover in different times. Sydney’s, probably the end of 2024; Melbourne had some more supply coming, so end of 2025,” he said.
Maintaining Interest
Interest rate increases have not helped matters, Simpson said, but he added that he expects some relief soon on that front.
“I feel like we’re at or near the peak of the interest rate cycle with cuts to come. … I think if you fast-forward a year or 18 months’ time, there’ll be a whole lot more comfort about what the cash rate is, what the debt cost is and what the income of properties are,” he said.
Wales said some investors are still “sitting on the sidelines expecting more distress.”
“Through the midpoint of the year, we weren’t necessarily sure which way the trading markets were going to go. Most of the operators were confident they were going to meet their budgets in the full year, though obviously it depends market to market. I think we’ve got through that better than most anticipated, and I don’t think we're going to see the same distress,” she said.
Moors added: “If you want the stress, go to the office market. Hotels, if you look at the level of transactions that are occurring, that is a whole new world.”
He said for full-year 2023, the Australian hotel sector is expecting deals to top $2 billion Australian dollars ($1.28 billion) for the second year running.
Moors added IHG Hotels & Resorts’ InterContinental Double Bay, Sydney, is one property on the market, with a guide price of AU$240 million.
Transaction volumes are being beefed up by new investor entrants, Moors added.
“Particularly from Southeast Asia. Looking at our sector, Japan and Australia are the two hottest markets for Singapore investors right now,” he said. “There’s new capital. People who’ve traditionally been in other asset classes are now coming into the Australian [hotel] market because of the strength of the sector ... the fundamentals.”
Over the Top
Simpson said there's still a lot of uncertainty among hotel investors regarding if or when to buy.
“Because [the hotel industry is] such a transparent market, there’s a lot of concern about buying something at a certain point in time and looking like a donkey because it was the wrong time to do it,” he said.
Simpson added that buyers who are bold and have “conviction now are going to do really well in five years’ time.”
“When debt gets cheaper, and your income goes up, the asset value goes up, and you make a lot of money,” he said.
The panelists said the sweat on the brow of the Australian hotel industry is starting to evaporate.
Business is coming back in layers, helped by the rebound in international visitors, Wales said.
“We’ve still only got two-thirds of international [air] capacity. It’s been much slower to come back than what we all anticipated, and China’s only just become an approved destination,” she said.
Domestically, corporate and group travelers are booking hotels with much shorter lead times, she added.
“Occupancies are increasing, and rates are normalizing. ... I don't think any of the leisure markets outperformed over the last year. I think domestic tourism should do well, and the capital cities. I think Sydney’s going to have a phenomenal 18 months and beyond,” she said.
Wales added that hotel supply in Sydney has not risen at the rate that had been speculated.
“We never do,” she said, referring to Sydney, “and Melbourne, it’s always had a long history of absorbing supply.”
Moors said Melbourne is right behind Sydney in occupancy “despite having some 5,000 new rooms open since 2020.”
Despite some negative travel sentiment in destinations such as the Gold Coast and Cairns, Simpson said he could not think of an Australian market that is performing poorly.
“There was a soft couple of months, and I think that affected more or less all of Australia, but forward bookings for the balance of the year are strong, the resort markets are strong. There’s nowhere where I think, ‘Gee, I want to avoid that’,” he said.