Outrigger seeking a property for its Aussie return

The Outrigger Reef Waikiki resort in Hawaii.

The private-equity controlled Outrigger Hospitality Group has stepped up its plans to reacquire a foothold in Australia’s tourism industry, according to its president and chief executive officer, Jeff Wagoner.

The Honolulu-based executive, who spent the past week in Australia meeting with hundreds of travel partners, said he was under serious pressure to find a hotel or resort in Australia given the great relationships Outrigger enjoys here.

Mr Wagoner said Australian travellers had an appetite for Outrigger’s hotels and resorts in Hawaii, Thailand, Mauritius and the Maldives, as booking patterns were now exceeding pre-Covid levels.

Outrigger Hospitality Group chief Jeff Wagoner.

“We owe it to Australia to come back here to Australia,” Mr Wagoner said.

The KSL-owned Outrigger’s executives are examining opportunities on the eastern seaboard o purchase a beachfront or beach community hotel of at least 200 to 300 rooms.

“We are aggressively looking in Australia,” Mr Wagoner said, adding that he had no interest in buying the management rights to a hotel in Australia. Instead Outrigger’s plan was to purchase an Australian hotel and manage it as well.

Currently, Outrigger has 26 hotels in Hawaii, three in Thailand, two in Fiji, a recently opened beachfront property in the Maldives and one in Mauritius.

After selling out of Australia in 2006, the resort owner and operator is now intent on re-entering the market if it can find an appropriate property, preferably in Sydney, the Gold Coast or further north in Port Douglas.

In Sydney, Mr Wagoner said he particularly liked Manly.

“It’s important for it to be the right property; it has to be right and it has to be beachfront,” he said. “I (also) want to be here in a resort that has scale.

“We have someone looking full-time in Australia,” he said. Mr Wagoner said that Australians were second only to Americans in terms of customer numbers.

The Japanese tourism market was yet to return in full.

“I want more Oceania business,” he said.

Outrigger was acquired by Colorado-based KSL Capital Partners in 2016. Earlier that year it sold its Australian properties to the Mantra group. Those properties were then picked up by Accor.

It once had 14 hotels and resorts in Australia. It embarked on a major renovation program of several of its Hawaii-based hotels during Covid.

KSL Capital last year fought off equity firms to buy the Four Points by Sheraton, Sydney at Central Park from private ­hotelier Jerry Schwartz for about $150m.