Tune Hotels acquires Melbourne property
Malaysia’s Tune Hotels has acquired an older-style office building in Melbourne for $11 million, where it plans to develop its first Australian low-budget hotel.
The building is situated in Swanston Street, Carlton, and will undergo a $22.5 million redevelopment into a five-level hotel with 235 rooms and three levels of serviced apartments.
Tune Hotels group chief executive Mark Lankester hopes to have the chain’s flagship Melbourne hotel open before Christmas 2012.
Lankester said recently the company had been in talks about sites in Sydney and Perth, as well as the Gold Coast, while he was also looking at Darwin and possibly Brisbane.
Part of the Tune Group set up by Tony Fernandes, the head of budget airline AirAsia, Tune Hotels follows the same model by offering a no-frills product.
It has 12 hotels – nine in Malaysia, two in Bali and one in London – with a further 54 under construction across South-East Asia.
“We’ve got another 14 under construction in London,” Lankester said. “It’s been so successful that we just want to continue there.”
Ian Jarrett
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