A consortium including Accor Asia Pacific and Ascendas has acquired Mirvac Group's hotel management business, Mirvac Hotels & Resorts, for a reported $327 million, a transaction that includes 46 hotels across Australia and New Zealand.
Bloomberg reports that the addition of 6,100 rooms will help Accor achieve its global target the next two years of adding 40,000 rooms a year. "This operation is a major success in a high-growth market,” Accor Chief Executive Officer Denis Hennequin said. “I am confident in our capacity to reach our objective."
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the deal also means Accor and Ascendas get a 49-percent stake in the Mirvac Wholesale Hotel Trust, which owns seven four- to five-star properties across Australia. These include the Quay West hotels, the Quay Grand at Circular Quay as well as the Sebel hotels in Newcastle and Mandurah in Western Australia.
Accor already runs around 160 hotels in Australia, with brands including Sofitel, Pullman, Novotel, Mercure and Ibis.
The Sydney Morning Herald also added that Mirvac had alluded to the sale of the division in June "as part of a consolidation of its business into the commercial and retail sectors, leaving hotels deemed as non-core."
The deal comes as the Australia hotel market suffers from a drop in international tourism and the high Australian dollar. Michael Thomson, the national director for valuations of hotels and leisure at Colliers International, told the Sydney Morning Herald that the strength of the Australian dollar made international destinations more affordable and encouraged Australians to travel overseas. The high dollar also deterred foreign visitors.
The acquisition of Mirvac comes on the heels of Accor's sale of its Formule 1 stake to Southern Sun Hotels, a subsidiary of the Tsogo Sun group, for $37.5 million.
