There are 13 hotels totalling 2,575 rooms currently under construction and another nine properties in the final stages of planning.
Last August, Melbourne Convention Bureau (MCB) said the city had added 4,889 rooms in 21 new hotels in less than four years, which put the city’s total inventory at 26,500 rooms, an increase of 23 per cent.
Now 22 new hotels are expected to be added between 2024 and 2029, for a total of well over 30,000 rooms.
With the added accommodation capacity, MCB anticipates gaining even larger mega-conventions than the 14,000-plus delegate Rotary International Convention held in Melbourne last year.
While most of the new hotels are in Melbourne’s CBD, two will open shortly at Melbourne Airport – Accor’s combined ibis Styles and Novotel are already being previewed to media and the business events sector.
Among the most anticipated 2025 hotel debuts in Melbourne are two luxury hotels: the 277-room 1Hotel across the Yarra from Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre and the 500-room Shangri-La Melbourne, near the Royal Exhibition Building.
Outside of the CBD there are new upscale hotels under construction in Cremorne, Box Hill and Hawthorn.
There are a further nine hotels Accommodation Australia lists as being in the “final planning” stage, which would add another 1,478 new hotel rooms to Melbourne’s room stock between 2026 and 2029, for a total of 4,053 new rooms. The report notes four “deferred” hotels, which would have added 537 rooms, that are not included in these figures.
Meanwhile, the latest Accommodation Australia hotel performance report shows that after a very busy Q1 in Melbourne with the Australian Open, Taylor Swift and Pink concerts, the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix and AFL games that drew sell-out crowds to both the MCG and Marvel Stadium, Melbourne hotel occupancies fell from a record average of 93.6 per cent to an average 67.9 per cent in April, which was “broadly in line with seasonal trends”.
By comparison, Adelaide averaged 77.9 per cent occupancy in April, Perth 76 per cent and Sydney 74.8 per cent.
Perhaps the high number of Melbourne hotel rooms is also having an effect on the average daily room rate, which was $198.60 in April, compared with every other capital recording a larger figure – from $212.10 in Brisbane to $282.60 in Sydney.
Accommodation Australia said Melbourne’s strong start to 2024 highlighted “the impact of the event industry on driving room night demand and supporting a healthy overnight visitor economy”.
