JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group’s Craig Collins and Peter Harper negotiated the sale. One of Australia’s largest hotel portfolios sold by Luxembourg based AccorInvest to Sam Arnaout of Sydney based Iris Capital.

Known as the AccorInvest Australian Hotel Portfolio (“the Portfolio”), it is made up of 17 hotels located across Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane, together with several major regional cities.

JLL Hotels & Hospitality Group’s Craig Collins and Peter Harper negotiated the sale of the portfolio.

Of the 17 properties, which comprise a total of 1,797 rooms, four are branded as ibis hotels and the other 13 are ibis Budget hotels. Notable assets include the ibis Hotel & Apartments Melbourne, ibis Sydney Airport, ibis Budget Sydney Olympic Park, ibis Newcastle and ibis Budget Brisbane Airport.

Craig Collins said, “The pure scale of the portfolio and its diversity – in terms of location, market positioning and income profile – attracted significant interest from a very broad range of capital sources. We would like to thank AccorInvest for entrusting us with such an important mandate and congratulate Iris Capital on acquiring an unparalleled foothold and becoming one of the largest hotel owners in the country.”

Sam Arnaout, CEO, Iris Capital said, “We are delighted to have secured such a large portfolio in-one-line. This purchase fits in well with our current hospitality pub portfolio, takes our count to 45 hotels and delivers on the group’s strategy for diversification. The AccorInvest Portfolio is well placed for repositioning and gives Iris immediate scale in an extremely tightly held hotel market. Seldom do these opportunities present themselves to market and we thank AccorInvest and JLL for the opportunity.”

”We are pleased to secure this transaction, which is part of our asset management plan and is fully in line with our strategy to strengthen in Europe in the economic and mid-range segments,” comments Gilles Clavié, CEO of AccorInvest.

Peter Harper, Managing Director – Head of Investment Sales Australasia said, “As the biggest hotel sale in 2020, year-to-date hotel transaction volumes have reached almost $600 million which is an incredibly strong result given the start to the year we had. This deal, together with our recent sales of the Novotel Brisbane and Vibe Hotel Melbourne, is a clear demonstration of the capital depth in the Australian hotel investment market for everything from metropolitan motels to major CBD hotels. We expect to announce several other transactions shortly so there’s no doubting that deal flow is back in the market.”

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