Peak accommodation body, Tourism Accommodation Australia (TAA), hosted its half yearly market update at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney this week, with key takeouts including Sydney seeing
substantial new hotel supply (for the first time in four years)coming online, while Melbourne is up 11% in overnight trips and looking at 13.9% growth in new rooms for 2020.
Presenters – Greg Clark, Head of Investment Strategy at Hostplus; STR’s Regional Manager Pacific, Matthew Burke; and Adele Labine-Romain, National Tourism Sector Leader and Partner at Deloitte Access Economics – gave extensive insights into the global economy, hotel performance and tourism performance trends.
“What is clear from these presentations is that our sector is doing well, despite global pressures and a changing landscape,” TAA NSW Acting CEO, Dr Adele Lausberg said.
“It is encouraging to hear that nationally, occupancy levels are sitting around 76% and while these are expected to retreat slightly in 2020 with the new supply coming into the market, they are expected to return to the current level over the next three years” Dr. Lausberg commented.
The forum was told that the Deloitte Access Economics Tourism and Hotel Market Outlook for 2019 showed that two thirds of our international market is repeat visitors, with even higher repeat visitation rates from some of our key Asian markets, which points to a need for Australia to ensure its product is new and diverse to keep these visitors engaged.
Australians continue to travel around the country in increasing numbers, and for the first time in a while, the growth in domestic overnight trips is exceeding the growth in international arrivals. Domestic visitation has now been growing for the last eight years.
This creates an opportunity for both urban properties and Australia’s regional areas to tap into the increasing domestic visitation.
According to STR, there is a strong pipeline of new properties, with 50,000 new rooms planned across the country and nearly 17,500 currently under construction including 7,000 planned in the luxury sector, making Australia the 3rd largest pipeline across the region.
