Super fund giant’s $2b caravan park play goes upmarket
Caravan park operator G’day Group, majority-owned by super fund Australian Retirement Trust, is going upmarket with a swag of resort acquisitions, most recently in Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain.
That acquisition is the 43-room Cradle Mountain Wilderness Village, which stands next to a tourist park – itself recently refurbished – that G’day Group is already operating there under its Discovery Parks brand.
The two facilities will be combined, according to G’day Group founder and chief executive Grant Wilckens.
“We’d spent about $20 million a couple of years ago on the property, and lo and behold, our neighbour came up for sale,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
“We thought that it’s a great business. It’s got a restaurant, it’s got some lovely cabins and great facilities that could really blend and work quite well with our holiday park.
“We now obviously own a big chunk of Cradle Mountain from an accommodation perspective. We’re quite bullish and excited about what Tasmania has to offer.”
The acquisition of the Cradle Mountain chalet-style resort from Kriticos Group is just one of a string of deals that began after G’day Group built an 83-tent glamping facility on Western Australia’s Rottnest Island in 2019.
Two years later it bought the El Questro Wilderness Park in Western Australia’s Kimberley Region and Lake Argyle, followed by other destinations including Wilpena Pound Resort and McCracken Resort in South Australia, Kings Canyon in the Northern Territory and Undara in Queensland.
That’s all part of a grand plan by Wilckens to make G’day Group the go-to operator across the regional holiday market, more than 20 years after he bought his first five-asset portfolio of caravan parks.
That means taking G’day Group beyond its traditional staple of “caravan and camping” and resort and luxury style accommodation, he said.
“We’ve got about seven, high-end hospitality, resort-type portfolio properties. They’re not caravan and camping, but they’re very quintessentially Australian.
“When we think about our vision to be the undisputed leader in regional travel experiences, that means not just caravan and camping but also the more unique, remote hospitality experiences.”
G’day Group’s $2 billion portfolio includes Discovery Parks, a network of almost 90 holiday parks and resorts; G’day, a network of more than 240 licensed parks; and its growing portfolio of upmarket resorts such as El Questro.
Growth comes more directly through acquisitions, but G’day Group also has a significant annual development pipeline as well, funded in part from free cash flow from the business.
And with the backing of the $300 billion Australian Retirement Trust, the operator has no need to go looking for capital elsewhere, according to Wilckens.
“Access to capital is not a problem. Have they got appetite to invest more? Absolutely,” he said.
Another growth driver for G’day Group is its popular rewards program, which has 250,000 members. The post-COVID-19 cost-of-living crunch is also a tailwind, according to Wilckens, as Australians forgo expensive holidays abroad to venture locally.
Spending in the sector is 70 per cent up on pre-COVID-19 levels and winter bookings are strong in the northern part of Australia this year, he said.
“What we’re seeing is the lower Aussie dollar, higher cost of living and people are choosing to holiday at home. As a result, that’s putting some really good momentum into our properties.”
