Cairns to welcome new $100m hotel
Dubai-based Syrian billionaire Ghassan Aboud is planning a third $100 million Cairns hotel development, snapping up the Bellview Motel and Backpackers and an office block.
Aboud’s GA Group, which has significant business interests in the Arab states, is understood to have paid up to $12 million for the Bellview Motel and Backpackers at 85-87 The Esplanade as well as the adjoining three-level Virginia House office block fronting 68 Abbott St, in a deal negotiated by CBRE.
The Bellview Motel and Backpackers attracted 10 formal offers but through private negotiations Aboud — who is already in discussions with major groups to manage the hotel development — increased the parcel size through the acquisition of the office block.
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Aboud is also adding 70 rooms to the Rydges Tradewinds hotel, bringing it up to 320 rooms in another $100 million development.
Across the road from the Bellview Motel on a site in Aplin St and Abbott St he is planning a two-tower apartment and hotel project of about four stars on a 4000sqm site.
CBRE says GA Group’s Bellview acquisition was the last opportunity to acquire a development site on the prime Esplanade block.
GA Group now owns clearly the best three development sites in the Cairns CBD
CBRE Cairns managing director Danny Betros says the site adds to GA Goup’s stable of prime development projects with plans and concepts now on the drawing board for the highest and best use of the site.
“GA Group now owns clearly the best three development sites in the Cairns CBD,” Betros says.
Betros expects Cairns will have a shortage of quality four and five-star hotels by 2019, given inbound tourism growth.
This article originally appeared on www.theaustralian.com.au/property.
