The reality is, figures from 2025 were inflated by the confluence of a late Easter, Anzac Day and an annual leave hack.
Last year, savvy workers strung at least eight days together from Good Friday to Anzac Day in a public holiday/annual leave hack that was not available in 2026. Most states did not even have a public holiday for Anzac Day in 2026 due to it falling on a Saturday.
Sydney topped the occupancy chart with 78 per cent, up 1.1 per cent year-on-year, followed by Perth at 76.2 per cent occupancy, Hobart at 76 per cent, Adelaide at 73.5 per cent, Brisbane at 72.7 per cent, Melbourne at 69.5 per cent and the Gold Coast at 65.7 per cent.
On average daily rate (ADR), Gold Coast was at the top of the pile, with $301.81, up 5.6 per cent, and well ahead of Sydney at $256.83, followed by Adelaide on $242.81, Perth on $241.50, Brisbane on $236.71, Hobart on $208.09 and Melbourne at $199.18.
Sydney’s revenue per available room (RevPAR) was $200.43, up 1.2 per cent, ahead of Gold Coast on $198.17, Perth on $183.91, Adelaide on $178.49, Brisbane on $172.09, Hobart on $158.14 and Melbourne on $138.43.
With the business events sector avoiding Easter and the subsequent Anzac weekend, Melbourne lagged, even as it staged five AFL matches over the that weekend as well as the traditional Essendon-Collingwood Anzac Day 90,000-pax blockbuster. The city also hosted a cloud and data centre conference in April, in addition to the Women Deliver global meeting, which attracted over 6,000 delegates.
Despite all this, Melbourne’s numbers were down across all measures – occupancy was down three per cent, ADR was down 2.8 per cent and RevPAR was down 5.7 per cent year on year.
Adelaide staged its AFL Gather Round in April, effectively a major event with all AFL teams playing in the South Australian capital over one weekend. The city’s ADR was up 4.7 per cent.
Sydney staged several expos in April, including the Royal Easter Show with some agribusiness conferencing.
Brisbane, on the other hand, had strong performance in the middle two weeks of April with multi-day conferencing activity including the International Mining Geology Conference 2026 and WagyuEdge’26. Brisbane also hosted the Australian Athletics Championships, which should have bumped up its hotel performance.
Perth conferences in April included the International Research Society for Public Management 2026, the AusIMM Technology forum for the mining industry, CISO Perth 2026 on information security, a conference on the tourism impact of sport and major events and the 9th RACS Annual Scientific Congress.
