‘We'd open 10 more hotels in Melbourne': Marriott

“We’ve signed other deals in the city for Marriott and Moxy hotels, and we have the St Regis Hotel under development on the Yarra,” an ebullient Mr Hunt told The Australian Financial Review.

“Can Melbourne take more hotels? Of course, it can. These new hotels are demand drivers. It’s the other [older] hotels, that have to play catch up,” he said.

Fuelling his optimism, Mr Hunt said the new Le Meridien would be 80 per cent full in its first month of operation with more than 80 per cent of bookings coming from its loyalty program.

While the hotel has been given a boost by the Grand Prix, Mr Hunt said occupancy and asking rates were improving every month across the Marriott portfolio.

“For the first quarter of the year, we are up 19 per cent [on a revenue per room basis] compared with the first quarter of 2019. It’s primarily domestic-led, but corporate travel is also back to 2019 levels,” he said.

The only market segment yet to return to pre-pandemic levels was MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) because of a lack of airlift capacity.

“I’ve spoken to both [Qantas boss] Alan Joyce and Jayne [Hrdlicka at Virgin]. We need more planes in the sky.”

Paying homage to its long history as an entertainment venue – the hotel was previously live music venue the Palace Theatre – the Le Meridien includes a ground floor lobby and bar that takes its inspiration from the golden age of cinema and a restaurant called Dolly that Mr Hunt said had “all mystique of being backstage at the theatre”. There’s also an outdoor swimming pool on level five of the 12-storey hotel.

Chinese developer Jinshan Investments acquired the site from receivers for $11.2 million in 2012, but had to go to Victoria’s planning tribunal to secure a permit after music lovers lobbied hard for its preservation. The new hotel includes the original art deco-style facade and other heritage elements.

Originally built as the Excelsior Hotel in the late 1850s, the property had come full circle to be a hotel again, Mr Hunt said.

The opening of the Le Meridien, which Marriott announced back in early 2018 gives the operator its 10th hotel in the Melbourne CBD, and its 42nd in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. (Another 24 are in the pipeline including a W Hotel that will open in October in the Ribbon building at Darling Harbour.)

Marriott’s portfolio will grow to 11 in Melbourne and 43 in the region next week, when the doors are flung open to the city’s first Ritz-Carlton, which will take out the top 17 floors of an 80-storey skyscraper.

Melbourne has been the epicentre of Marriott’s aggressive expansion plans in the region, plans which have been in some cases delayed but not derailed by the pandemic.