Hotel puts Townsville on map as luxury travel destination

Work is starting on an “exciting” five-star hotel in the Breakwater precinct on Townsville’s seafront.

The owners of The Ville Resort-Casino are going ahead with an “exciting” five-star $80 million hotel project in the Breakwater precinct on Townsville’s seafront.

They are also in discussions with the federal government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility about lending for a superyacht marina project.

The Ville CEO Michael Jones marked the start of work on the hotel on Friday.

Being built by Prime Constructions, the project will have a peak of 150 people working on site, while 180 new operational jobs will be created on completion in mid-2023.

“This is exciting for us and the Townsville community as this project will not only help stimulate the local economy but also put North Queensland on the map as a luxury travel destination,” Mr Jones said.

“The hotel is going to be something truly special that Townsville hasn’t seen before.”

The new hotel next to the casino will feature 132 rooms, each with their own private balconies taking advantage of panoramic views over the Coral Sea to Magnetic Island, Townsville’s iconic beachfront and Castle Hill.

There will also be a rooftop tapas bar and infinity pool, a fine dining restaurant, day spa, seaside boardwalks and ground floor Japanese-inspired restaurant and bar.

Owner Chris Morris said the project had been in the pipeline for several years with a lot of time invested in ensuring the final concept and design was just right.

“This location is truly something special – the views are some of the best you’ll see anywhere in the world – so we wanted to make sure that what we built here was going to be worthy of its surrounds,” Mr Morris said.

“I’m pretty confident that what we’ve come up with is going to put Townsville and the broader North Queensland region firmly on the radar for leisure travellers from all over Australia and abroad.”

Mr Jones said they needed more hotel rooms, particularly on weekends.

They had been getting good support from interstate VIP punters and domestic holiday makers before Covid-19 and had now built a new gaming room getting great support from people within Queensland and, hopefully, soon from interstate.

He said the five-star hotel would be the next step up for The Ville.

“For us, it’s an amazingly exciting project. The show stopper will be the pool on the roof. We think that’s hopefully going to be the iconic shot for Townsville,” Mr Jones said.

While recent mixed messages on lending from NAIF had caused a rethink, Mr Jones said they were confident to proceed.

“We are working through the final stages of finance at the moment but it's all systems go. We are in discussions with NAIF and some other parties around the marina,” Mr Jones said.

He said Chris Morris was really keen to ensure superyacht berthing was available as part of a proposed marina fronting the hotels and studies had been commissioned.

“It will be dependent on dollars but we are working through that at the moment so it will be another exciting chapter in the future,” Mr Jones said.

Originally published as Hotel puts Townsville on map as luxury travel destination