Village Roadshow Hotel: Green light for $333m Movie World Hotel

Councillors have made their decision on whether an ambitious $333m hotel at a theme park should proceed. Discover the outcome.

Village Roadshow will move forward with building a giant $333m hotel at the Movie World theme park after city leaders tipped the project to deliver a massive economic boost to the region.

A development application for the 22-storey, 600 room hotel was supported by a super majority of councillors at a full council meeting on Tuesday.

Only Daphne McDonald did not vote.

Village Roadshow Theme Parks has been given the green light for its $333m hotel project.

Planning chair Mark Hammel speaking in favour the project said one in two conventions in Queensland were held on the Coast.

He said the extra convention centre space with the project would be more than welcomed.

“In the first five years – 400 jobs in the short term accommodation space totalling around $100 million in salaries, a contribution to tourism of 876,000 customers creating expenditure of roughly $840 million,” he said.

“The function facilities are expected to have 130,000 attendees, creating $125 million in expenditure on the Gold Coast.

Cr Mark Hammel. Picture: Mike Batterham

“They are massive numbers. It’s brilliant to see a site that has its own zoning as a special tourism hub hopefully take the next step of delivering this.”

The tower, which will be built on a 5.1ha site on the existing carpark of the theme park will feature a “panoramic sky deck”, infinity pool, bar and restaurants on its 21st level.

It is significantly bigger than the nine-storey hotel which was already approved for the site by council.

Village Roadshow in a statement welcomed the council’s decision.

Planned hotel at Movie World on the Gold Coast.

“It was pleasing to see the development application for the Movie World hotel has received approval from the Gold Coast Council following the community consultation process,” the statement read.

“We will continue to work through the planning for the project and are excited to work with our local community on developments such as these to continue to drive jobs, innovation and tourism for the city of Gold Coast.

“We currently do not have any detailed timelines for the hotel project, as there will be a considerable amount of work still to be done which is standard process given the nature of such projects, more details will be released at an appropriate time.”

There is no timeline for construction beginning on the tower.

Area councillor William Owen-Jones said the project was a “massive investment” by Village Roadshow after previous similar applications for theme park developments in the north had not proceeded.

He said officers had since a planning committee meeting resolved several issues such as noise for residents and planting of trees.

Mr Owen-Jones said there would be some reductions of parking spaces with the hotel being built on the theme park’s car park. However, there would be additions with new spaces.

“One of the upsides for the local community from this application is it probably sounds the end of the idea of external carparking on Kopps Road north of the traditional tourism site,” he said.

“I think this is a really positive thing to happen for the Oxenford community.”

Councillor Peter Young said he had concerns about 450 car parks being lost, and during peak periods there would be demand for parking at the Kopps Road site.