Marriott to dazzle with a dozen luxury properties as tourism comes back

The world’s largest hotel chain is making Australia a priority as borders re-open and cities come back to life.

The new W Hotel under construction at Sydney’s Darling Harbour. Marriot has 12 hotels opening in Australia this year. Picture: John Feder

Undeterred by the pandemic which has decimated global tourism, American hotel giant, Marriott International, has more than 290 hotels under development in the Asia Pacific region, including 12 high-profile hotels in Australia which are scheduled to open by the end of this year.

But it’s the top-tier hotels in its portfolio, such as the JW Marriott and the W Hotel which are the strongest performers for Marriott, the third biggest hotel chain in Australia after the French-owned Accor Group and British-owned multinational, IHG Hotels and Resorts.

“When you look across our portfolio what we are seeing right now with our luxury and upper up-scale hotels is that they are experiencing a lot of growth, particularly in resort destinations,” said Marriott International President Rajeev Menon, who is responsible for the Asia Pacific region excluding China.

“When we look at Queensland we relaunched the JW Marriott in Surfers Paradise after a $35m re-do. That has done exceptionally well. Mirage hotels in both the Gold Coast and Port Douglas are (also) doing very well.”

Marriott says it has the biggest construction pipeline in the Asia Pacific region but like its hotelier competitors it is hampered by chronic skill storages.

However, the Singapore-based Mr Menon told The Australian he was finding ways to circumvent the lack of staff.

“Well over 150 million jobs in travel and tourism have been misplaced,” Mr Menon said, commenting on the effect of the pandemic on hospitality workers.

“Many people have left the industry, and with borders closed you don’t have any backpackers and a lot of the emigrant workforce is not there,” added Mr Menon, who is responsible for the business performance and development across 22 countries in the Asia Pacific Region and more than 450 hotels and resorts including 23 brands.

“There is pressure but we are aggressively working on multiskilling strategies and the best use of technologies to figure out the best ways to be efficient while we find ways to work more efficiently.”

Despite this Marriott spent much of last year growing its footprint in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, adding four new hotels to its portfolio in 2021 – W Melbourne, Courtyard by Marriott Brisbane, Melbourne Marriott Hotel Docklands and The Tasman in Hobart which opened in December.

Apart from its plans to open a further 12 hotels by the end of this year, the hotelier says 11 more hotels are expected to open across the region over the next few years.

“In Melbourne we have the W which we opened in February last year. We are going to be launching the Ritz Carlton Melbourne this year and we also will launch the W Sydney and they will be iconic assets.

“In terms of growth the W brand is growing very well. We have W Hotels in Brisbane and Melbourne, and Sydney is opening this year,” said Mr Menon, adding that The Tasman Hotel which is part of Marriott’s Luxury Collection opened in December and its rooms were sold out for the first few weeks.

At the cheaper end Marriott is opening several select service Courtyard by Marriott hotels and it has a couple of Moxy’s lined up to open next year.

“We have a number of hotels across the various lodging tiers,” said Mr Menon, adding that the chain has 26 operating hotels at present.

At the height of Covid, Marriott did not close any hotels but several of its properties were used in the quarantine program.