Despite winter being a popular time to stage business events in a warmer climate, Queensland’s highlights tended to be in the sporting arena with a State of Origin game in Brisbane filling hotels to 91.3 per cent occupancy on July 8, followed by a Wallabies v France test on July 11 that saw Brisbane occupancy reach 87.3 per cent, with an average daily rate (ADR) of $302.20 and revenue per available room (RevPAR) of $263.92. Adding to the local performance was the UCI BMX World Championships from 17 to 25 July, which saw demand lift for extended-stay accommodation.
Nationally the major cites ranked by average occupancy performance over the month were: Sydney at 79.2 per cent, Brisbane at 79 per cent, Canberra at 76.7 per cent, Perth at 76.6 per cent and Melbourne at 74.4 per cent.
The Gold Coast, which had the lowest occupancy of major visitor destinations at 71.6 per cent, topped the ADR rankings. The average daily rate for the Gold Coast was $292.09, while Brisbane was $249.36, Sydney was $248.09, Perth was $229.39 and Melbourne was $196.55.
RevPAR again saw the Gold Coast at the top of the table at $209.11, followed by Brisbane at $196.93, Sydney at $196.49, Perth at $175.64 and Melbourne at $146.21
The Accommodation Australia report from which these statistics are drawn also noted year-on-year figures were generally below July 2025, which was a stellar month across business event and major event segments.
Conferencing contributed to strong mid-week demand in the Brisbane market with events including AS4SAN 2026, the RMA Network Annual Conference and the Australasian Society of Legal Philosophy event.
Sydney benefitted from a range of business events, including the World Credit Union Conference (WCUC 2026), which brought 2,400 financial cooperative leaders from 39 countries to Sydney, the Online Retailer Conference & Expo 2026 with 4,000 delegates, the Australian Clean Energy Summit (ACES) and the Venture and Capital 2026 Private Market Investment Conference.
Meanwhile, Melbourne, still suffering from an excess of hotel rooms, also staged a range of business events, expos and leadership summits during July. These included foodpro 2026, a trade event for food processing, packaging and manufacturing innovation, SmallBiz Melbourne 2026, an SME-focused event on practical AI integration, business scaling and digital transformation and the GBS National Business Summit – an inaugural full-day leadership and growth summit held at RACV Melbourne, hosted by the Good Blokes Society.
