Time-share operator, Accor Premiere Vacation Club, has paid $11 million for 59 apartments at Busselton Bungalows, which it will re-brand as a Grand Mercure Resort.
Time-share operator, Accor Premiere Vacation Club, has paid $11 million for 59 apartments at Busselton Bungalows, which it will re-brand as a Grand Mercure Resort.
The property will be the ninth Grand Mercure in the hotel and resort collection available to APVC members, and follows the $4.5 million acquisition and Grand Mercure branding of historic Basildene Manor in Margaret River in June last year.
APVC chief executive Martin Kandel said the property was located on the beachfront at Geographe Bay and featured an indoor pool and spa, outdoor pool and gardens, kids’ pool and kids club, two tennis and squash courts, a gym and games room.
The fully self-contained studios and the two- and three-bedroom apartments will undergo a soft furniture upgrade to reach the club’s 4.5 star standards.
APVC has thus far invested more than $68 million in tourism and infrastructure in Australia and New Zealand and said it was well on track to record an impressive 2006 bottom line, with $100 million in gross revenue.
Current club membership is 15,000 and the company expects its current annual growth rate of 6,000 memberships will double in two years.
The club was formed in 2000 when hotel group Accor Asia Pacific joined with property developer Becton Corporation, which listed on the Australian Stock Exchange last year.
Accor has more than 4,000 hotels in 90 countries and owns the hotel brands All Seasons, Sofitel, Novotel, Grand Mercure, Mecure, Ibis, and Formule One.
In September last year it acquired the four-star Sanctuary Golf Resort in Bunbury, comprising 38 apartments and suites, and re-badged it as the All Seasons.
Accor launched its sixth hotel in Perth last May with the 94-room, $8.8 million Acacia Hotel purchase and re-branding to All Seasons Perth.
As well as the All Seasons Perth, Accor now owns the Novotel Langley, Mercure Perth, Ibis Perth, Formule One Perth Airport, and the Novotel Vines Resort in the Swan Valley.
Accor and Becton are currently developing up to 40 one-, two- and three-bedroom time-share apartments on an 8,000 square metre site adjacent to the Vines Resort, which it purchased in 2005 for $1.2 million.
Becton announced to the ASX in early July, it was on track to outperform its 2006 profit forecast of $19.7 million and said its expanded focus on retirement, fund management and vacation club businesses had helped it to realise this figure.
Profits were certainly boosted in May, when the company sold the 16-storey May Holman Centre at 32 St Georges Terrace for $26 million, that was bought by Glenmont Properties Limited before it was taken over by Becton, for $23 million in 2000.
