Palazzo Versace Gold Coast Designer fittings, details stripped as potential $100m buyers circle
Rooms inside Palazzo Versace have been stripped of their distinctive trimmings as buyers consider a $100m deal to buy the luxury resort.
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Multiple buyers with hotel partners are circling icon Gold Coast hotel Palazzo Versace which has stripped distinctive styling from some rooms to make it more appealing for sale.
The signature look of the world’s first fashion-branded hotel faces extinction with one industry insider saying of the circling buyers that “everyone going in there would change it”.
Multiple investors are eyeing the property - tipped to be for sale for upwards of $100m – with at least two big-name hotel brands understood to be in talks to operate it, the Bulletin can reveal.
Representatives of major hotel groups, Accor and InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG), are understood to have inspected the luxury Main Beach site in recent weeks.
The brands are considering partnerships with property investors to acquire and operate the resort, which runs via a complex body corporate system with private apartment owners.
A spokesman for IHG declined to comment on the Palazzo Versace proposition.
“We would be having many conversations with owners and developers about potential hotels across our various markets, but we would never comment or speculate on any prospective deals unless a management or franchise agreement is signed,” the IHG spokesman said.
Accor also declined to comment when approached on Wednesday.
One industry insider revealed the sale proposal was so advanced that rooms within the 22-year-old waterfront site had been stripped of signature Versace details and painted bland colours to appeal to more contemporary hotelier tastes.
“And that does include some of the emblems and the really quite horrific ornamental,” the source said.
“They have made up rooms where they have painted that all out in white so you don’t notice it and removed all the lamps, and horrific cutlery, cushions and stuff like that … and you almost don’t know it’s Versace.”
The insider said whichever group ended up buying the resort, much of its ornate branding was likely to be binned.
The five-star hotel - which has hosted U2’s Bono, Beyonce and Jay Z, Baywatch icon Pamela Anderson and Snoop Dogg - recently underwent a multimillion-dollar refurbishment. An off-market sale campaign is being driven by JLL Hotels & Hospitality.
The Bulletin has contacted JLL for comment.
In 2012 China’s Dong Run Group acquired the 200-room luxury hotel for $68.5m through Nanbai Australia, a company set up by the group’s chairman Jing Lin Zuo. The purchase included several other Chinese and Australian-based shareholders.
Palazzo Versace was the brainchild of developer and Sunland Group founder Soheil Abedian, who approached the Italian fashion house in 1997 with the idea of a Versace-branded hotel.
It opened at Main Beach on the Gold Coast in 2000 and has since attracted the world’s wealthy and a host of celebrities.
Both Accor - Australia’s largest accommodation operator - and IHG have been acquiring hotels worldwide, with Accor picking up a management deal for Travel Lodge in a $620m deal last week.
It was Paris-based Accor’s largest integration since its $1.2bn acquisition of Gold Coast’s Mantra Group in 2018.
On the Gold Coast, IHG already operates Sanctuary Cove Resort, voco and Crowne Plaza in Surfers Paradise.
INSIDE STORY: HOW COAST WON OVER THE HOUSE OF VERSACE.
IT was during a simple father-son trip to the shops that the idea was hatched to build Australia’s first fashion-themed hotel.
It was 1997, 25 years ago, when Soheil and Sahba Abedian were at Marina Mirage.
The father and son, the team behind publicly listed development firm Sunland Group were mulling over what the company’s next project would be.
As the pair walked through the Christopher Skase-built centre, they looked through the window of a boutique clothing shop, taking in the details of the high-end fashion on the racks.
It was at that moment that the older Mr Abedian had a lightbulb moment – a hotel themed around one of the world’s greatest fashion houses.
There was just one logical option – Italy’s House of Versace.
“The fashion industry had grown rapidly in the 1980s and one of those geniuses was Gianni Versace,” Soheil Abedian said.
“Versace was the only fashion house in the world at the time which was not just concentrating on clothing but home wear too.
“Gianni always made a statement, saying he did not want to dress people, he wanted to dress the environment they live in.”
The Abedians wrote to the Versace family requesting a meeting which was granted, but hopes of meeting with Gianni Versace himself were dashed by the designer’s murder at the hands of spree killer Andrew Cunanan in July 1997.
After 14 months of negotiations, the Abedians flew to Milan in August 1998 where they met with Santo Versace, the fashion house’s new president.
“We went to Milan to see Santo and came to an agreement to build the first hotel of its kind on the Gold Coast,” Mr Abedian said.
“The meeting began at 9am and by 5pm we had a memorandum of understanding agreement signed.”
The site of the hotel was settled on – the Fisherman’s Wharf site which neighboured Marina Mirage, where the idea had been hatched.
Fisherman’s Wharf was a famous venue, but was deeply financially unsuccessful.
It closed at the beginning of 1998 and was immediately demolished to make way for the high-end hotel.
Members of the Versace family flew to the Gold Coast on multiple occasions to check on the project’s progress.
Mr Abedian revealed three things not widely known about the Palazzo Versace.
• One of its chandeliers was an antique which came from state library of Milan and was purchased when the Italian building was undergoing a refurbishment. The chandelier in the main foyer was previously owned by Gianni Versace himself.
• The carpet in the ballroom is made up of a single 400 sqm piece which has a unique design without any repetition in its pattern.
• The pattern on the floors of the hotel rooms was inspired by those of Italian palaces.
Designed by Desmond Brooks’ DBI Design, the hotel took shape through the end of the 1990s and into 2000.
Its opening, on Friday September 15, 2000, coincided with the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games.
Since its opening, 20 years ago next week, it has played home to some of the world’s best-known celebrities, including Johnny Depp, rock band U2 and The Rolling Stones.
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