Australian developer taps IHG for Sunshine Coast project

Australian hotel investment and development company Pro-invest will open the 167-room Holiday Inn Express & Suites Sunshine Coast in the town center of Maroochydore, a suburb in Queensland, Australia, next year. The company already  purchased a site in Maroochydore and filed a development application with Economic Development Queensland for a new select-service, upper-midscale hotel.

Pro-Invest has a master development agreement with IHG to develop and operate the Holiday Inn Express brand in Australia and New Zealand and the new hotel will be Pro-invest’s sixth in the pipeline for the brand, adding to the four already open in Adelaide, Sydney Macquarie Park, Newcastle, and Pro-invest’s other Queensland property, Holiday Inn Express Brisbane Central, which opened in 2017.

Sunshine Coast Growth

The hotel will be located in the city's central business district. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the district would “cement the Sunshine Coast as one of Queensland’s and Australia’s best-performing regional economies.”

Pro-invest CEO Ronald Barrott said the Sunshine Coast was going through an unprecedented economic transformation, and the acquisition of the site was a reflection of the group’s ability to target and deliver high-quality hotel development opportunities. “This will be one of the region’s most significant tourism infrastructure projects in decades,” Barrott said. 

Investment for the hotel will come from Pro-invest’s Australian Hospitality Opportunity Fund II, with Pro-invest responsible for the construction, launch and management of the hotel, According to Barrott, with the support of the Queensland Government and Sunshine Coast Council, "we will be able to expedite the development to have the hotel open to coincide with the official launch of the new Sunshine Coast Airport runway at the end of 2020.”

The Sunshine Coast is transitioning from a largely leisure-based market to a more diversified market with major growth in businesses establishing themselves in the region to take advantage of large-scale infrastructure projects such as the expanded airport, the Maroochydore city center and the underwater submarine cable, which will help establish the region as hi-tech hub in Queensland. Pro-invest expects the Holiday Inn Express brand to attract both business and leisure travelers from the area.