Australian Hotels &
Resorts 2025–2026

City-level RevPAR data from STR or Tourism Research Australia is not available in the research compiled for this report — a significant gap that caps confidence here at MEDIUM. What the evidence does show is directional: Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne are each performing differently, and the drivers of that performance are identifiable even without precise figures.

Brisbane's case is the strongest-evidenced. Property Council Australia's June 2025 analysis identifies the city as entering a 'new phase' of expansion, driven by a robust events calendar, rising international arrivals, and consistent demand across corporate and leisure segments.[Property Council] CBRE executive sentiment points to Brisbane — alongside Sydney — as a top growth market for hotel investment in H2 2025 and into 2026.[CBRE] The forward pipeline for events and infrastructure investment (including Brisbane 2032 Olympic planning) creates a demand horizon that other Australian cities cannot currently match.

Sydney and Melbourne remain the volume anchors of the national market. Both CBD and airport precincts benefit from international conference demand and airline capacity growth, with occupancy and ADR tracking at record levels in 2025.[thetraveler.org] Perth is absent from the evidence base in available sources — a data gap, not a performance signal. Luxury resort markets including the Whitsundays and Kangaroo Island are not covered by named data in the research compiled, though global luxury RevPAR trends (US luxury ADR up 5.0% year-on-year to August 2025) suggest potential upside if demand mirrors international patterns.[STR via Horwath HTL]

The Australian hotel market is structurally bifurcated between a small number of branded operators managing large portfolios and a fragmented tail of 698 businesses in total.[IBISWorld] The top of the market is dominated by Accor, which operates 65,075 rooms across 406 properties in the Asia Pacific region and holds the highest market share by IBISWorld's classification.[CBRE] In the past year alone, Accor expanded by approximately 1,700 rooms and five hotels — a pace of growth that compounds its distribution advantage over every other branded group operating in Australia.

Among owners, Meriton holds the number-one position by room count at 6,211 rooms across its portfolio, having maintained that ranking despite a slowed development pipeline.[CBRE] Millennium & Copthorne advanced to seventh place with 3,148 rooms across 18 hotels through portfolio expansion. EVT operates in both the ownership and management rankings — a dual role that gives it operating economics closer to the Accor model than a pure asset-owner like Meriton.[CBRE]

Quantitative market share data — branded room nights by operator, revenue share, or comparable RevPAR by brand tier — is not publicly available from STR or Tourism Research Australia in the research compiled here. The rankings above reflect room count, not revenue. This distinction matters: a budget operator with high room counts may rank above a luxury operator on rooms while generating far less revenue per available room. No public data resolves this gap for the Australian market at present.

JLL's 2025 Asia Pacific forecast puts regional hotel investment at USD 11.9 billion for the year, rising to USD 13.3 billion in 2026, with Australia described as a 'highly sought-after' safe-haven market drawing private wealth and institutional capital.[JLL] Liquidity is concentrating in core markets — Sydney and Brisbane are the top two named targets in CBRE's executive sentiment survey, where 82% of respondents expressed optimism for H2 2025 into 2026.[CBRE] Extended due diligence periods reflect selective deployment rather than hesitation about the market.

The most visible single transaction in the luxury segment is Altus Property's A$1.5 billion deal with The Trump Organization for a six-star resort — the largest named hotel capital event in Australia from the research compiled here, and a signal that ultra-luxury development commands appetite even at significant scale.[Altus/Trump deal report] Urban pipeline activity continues at smaller scale: a 102-room boutique property opened in Sydney's Wunderlich Lane in February 2025, though the operator is unnamed in available sources.[thetraveler.org]

Transaction-level data for Salter Brothers, Pro-invest, Schwartz Family Company, and Charter Hall — each active in Australian hotel investment in prior years — is absent from the research compiled for this report. This is a genuine data gap, not evidence of inactivity. JLL and CBRE do not publish granular Australian transaction volumes in publicly accessible formats, capping confidence on this dimension at MEDIUM.

The most material regulatory development for Australian hotel operators in 2025 is not a hotel-specific rule — it is a suite of Fair Work Act changes that directly target the casual, flexible employment structures that Australian hospitality has relied on for decades. Wage theft became a criminal offence on 1 January 2025, with penalties applying to underpayments that were previously treated as civil compliance matters.[WorkPro] Casual conversion rules requiring written responses within 21 days took effect on 26 February 2025.[WorkPro] The right to disconnect for small businesses applies from 26 August 2025. Superannuation rose from 11.5% to 12% on 1 July 2025.[WorkPro]

These changes are structurally more damaging to independent and smaller operators than to large branded chains. Accor, Marriott, and IHG have compliance infrastructure, centralised payroll systems, and the negotiating leverage to adjust employment structures across portfolios. A 20-room regional boutique hotel does not. The differential impact is the finding here — not the headline law change itself.

FIRB thresholds, state-level short-stay accommodation restrictions, and planning rule changes are absent from the evidence compiled for this report. IBISWorld references a dedicated regulation section in its 2025 industry report but does not publish specifics in accessible formats.[IBISWorld] This is a genuine gap: the competitive impact of short-term rental restrictions (Airbnb-style) in NSW, Victoria, and Queensland on hotel demand is a real factor that this report cannot quantify from available data.

The economics of the Australian hotel market in 2025–2026 are being shaped by a luxury premium at one end and structural cost pressure at the other. Globally, luxury and upper-upscale hotels were the only two chain scales to achieve positive RevPAR growth on a year-to-date basis through August 2025, with luxury ADR up 5.0% year-on-year.[Horwath HTL / STR] In Australia, 2025 is tracking as a record year for room rates, with operators pushing rate rather than occupancy — a deliberate margin strategy that works in gateway cities where demand is inelastic but creates vulnerability for regional and mid-market properties dependent on volume.

Specific GOP margins by asset class, EBITDA per available room for branded versus independent properties, and the economics of management agreements versus leases are not available from public sources for the Australian market. No Tier 1 consulting analysis of Australian hotel margin structure — from McKinsey, Deloitte, or PwC Australia — appears in the research compiled. This is the most significant data gap in this report. What can be said directionally: private equity commentary on hotel value creation cites cost management, digitalisation, and rebranding as the primary margin levers, implying that branded, professionally managed assets with modern systems outperform independents on operating efficiency.[Horwath HTL]

Construction cost inflation and planning delays are constraining new supply — Property Council Australia explicitly flags feasibility challenges as a barrier to hotel development.[Property Council] This supply constraint is the primary support for current room rates. If construction costs ease or planning processes accelerate, the pricing power that operators currently enjoy in gateway cities would come under pressure.

The demand picture for Australian hotels in 2025–2026 rests on three pillars: recovering international arrivals approaching 10 million annually, a strong events and conference calendar centred on Brisbane and Sydney, and domestic leisure demand that has proven resilient post-pandemic.[IBISWorld] Each pillar has a different risk profile. International arrivals are sensitive to exchange rates, aviation capacity, and origin-market economic conditions. Events demand is cyclical and geographically concentrated. Domestic leisure is the most stable but also the most price-sensitive — and it competes directly with short-term rental alternatives.

Booking channel data — the split between OTAs like Booking.com and Expedia versus direct hotel channels, and the role of loyalty programmes in driving repeat bookings — is absent from the research compiled for this report. This is a genuine gap for operators trying to understand customer acquisition costs. Global evidence suggests OTAs command significant share of leisure bookings; Australian-specific channel splits from STR or Tourism Research Australia were not available in the sources accessed.

The corporate segment is performing well in gateway CBDs, driven by the return of large-scale conferences and the recovery of business travel. CBRE identifies business hotels alongside luxury and extended-stay as the three leading investment categories — a proxy for where corporate demand is concentrated.[CBRE] The gap in the evidence base is origin-market data for international visitors: which country markets are driving arrivals growth, which are declining, and what that means for hotel segment mix (group tours versus independent travellers, for example) is not resolvable from the sources available.

The base case for Australian hotels through 2026 and into 2027 is continued growth at a slower rate than the 12.0% CAGR recorded over 2020–2025 — that number was recovery, not run rate. IBISWorld's structural CAGR for the market from 2020 to 2025 reflects normalisation from the COVID floor; the forward rate is expected to moderate as the rebound effect exhausts itself.[IBISWorld] JLL's Asia Pacific forecast of USD 13.3 billion in hotel investment for 2026 supports continued capital flow into the region, with Australia remaining a named priority market.[JLL]

The bull case rests on three conditions holding simultaneously: international arrivals continue their recovery trajectory toward pre-pandemic peaks and beyond, Brisbane's event pipeline and Olympic planning catalyse demand ahead of the 2032 games, and the luxury segment maintains its pricing power as global high-income travel spending holds up. None of these is implausible — but all three together would represent a benign global macro environment that is not currently assured.

The bear case is more specific. A sharp rise in Australian construction costs or a prolonged planning dispute delays the Brisbane supply pipeline at the same time that a global economic slowdown reduces corporate travel and international arrivals. Labour costs, already structurally higher from the 2025 law changes, would compress margins without revenue growth to absorb them. Independent and smaller operators would feel this first and hardest.