Gold Coast chicken farmers spend $45m on Brisbane hotel
The Gold Coast-based Singh family – a big player in the poultry industry – has diversified its investment portfolio after buying the 179-room former Pacific Hotel in Brisbane’s Spring Hill for $44.8 million.
Led by father-and-son team Teja and Sammy Singh, the family has rebranded the four-star hotel as the Mercure Brisbane Spring Hill, which will be operated by Accor under a hotel management agreement.
“We’re not moving away from chicken farms, but balancing our portfolio with self-storage and accommodation assets,” family spokesman Sammy Singh told The Australian Financial Review.
“The hotel including stamp duty has cost us close to $50 million. It’s got 179 rooms and fantastic conference areas overlooking the city and the Roma Street Parklands.” Mr Singh said.
He said the family was very excited to have brought Accor into the hotel as the operator and would undertake a “full upgrade” to bring the property up to the Mercure brand standard.
“The Brisbane hotel market is still in its infancy, and we see a lot of capital growth to come,” Mr Singh said.
The Brisbane hotel will bolt on to a portfolio that through Singh Enterprises includes the ownership and operation of several large poultry farms on the Gold Coast’s Scenic Rim region including properties at Beaudesert and Tamrookum.
The Singhs are also present in the self-storage sector, having converted a former Strawberry farm at Pimpama on the Gold Coast into a 9000 sq m facility at a cost of about $15 million. This opened in February and is operated by StoreLocal.
The family has also submitted plans for a 15,000 sq m StoreLocal facility on the site of the former Goldsteins Bakery at 509 Olsen Avenue in Molendinar (west of Southport) after purchasing the property for $6.2 million in late 2022.
The former Pacific Hotel in Spring Hill was one of several hotels owned and operated in a joint venture between WA-based investment company Ascot Capital and Facilimate Hotels. Hospitality veteran Stephen Lauder is the managing director of Pacific Hotels, which operates hotels at Newman in WA and Cairns.
Ascot Capital paid $29 million for the Spring Hill hotel in mid-2018.
The sale of the hotel was brokered by Wayne Bunz and Haley Manville from CBRE.
Last year, the CBRE agents sold the Sofitel Brisbane for $178 million to Singapore-listed CDL and The Inchcolm by Ovolo (also in Brisbane) to the Karim family’s Invictus Developments for $25 million.
Other noteworthy Brisbane hotel deals of the past few years include the 2021 sale of the Oakwood Hotel to the Gravanis Brothers for $50 million and the 2020 sale of the Fantauzzo Brisbane Art Series Hotel for about $75 million in 2020 to Ghassan Aboud’s Crystalbrook Collection (now called the Crystalbrook Vincent Brisbane). Both these deals were also brokered by CBRE.
“The Brisbane hotel market is one of the strongest in the country,” Mr Bunz told the Financial Review.
He said strong interstate migration, a substantial infrastructure investment program and the development of a big casino complex at Queen’s Wharf were the factors driving strong performance and demand for Brisbane hotels.
The latest February hotel figures from STR show Brisbane had a 71 per cent occupancy rate for the year-to-date, up from 67 per cent over the same period last year. The average daily rate was $219, down slightly from $223 last year.
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