By Vanessa Cavasinni, editor Australian Hotelier
CBRE Hotels has expanded its Australasian team by restructuring its leadership and making two new senior hires.
In the new arrangement, Wayne Bunz and Rob Cross will be the joint national directors of the CBRE Hotels agency business in Australasia, and Wesley Milsom will lead the Hotels Valuation business. Meanwhile, Sam Handy and Paul Fraser, both formerly of JLL Hotels & Hospitality, have been hired in senior positions in the Sydney and Brisbane office respectively.
Handy has been appointed Director of the New South Wales, reporting to the National Director Daniel Dragicevich. Handy had worked as vice president of investment sales at JLL’s New South Wales division.
Fraser, previously a senior vice-president at JLL Hotels Queensland, has 16 year of industry experience and will now lead the CBRE Hotels agency in Queensland.
“I am incredibly excited to get this huge opportunity to lead the Queensland Hotels transactional team at CBRE and the new challenges that this role will present over the coming years,” said Fraser.
“The Queensland market has seen a high number of hotel transactions over the last 36 months and I have been fortunate to be involved in a great majority of them. I believe the high number of transactions will continue for the foreseeable future with market sentiment still buoyant. With a continuing positive outlook in this asset class from the lending institutions, both buyers and sellers will continue to see more opportunities to either divest and/or acquire assets over the next couple of years.”
With the additional hire of Ben McDonald as a manager based in the Sydney office, Dragicevich has noted that the appointments have given CBRE Hotels seven operators in their national pubs team, making them the largest in the country dedicated to hotels.
“Having a team with a true national footprint and specialised local representatives is more important than ever as industry groups continue to adopt a more borderless approach to their acquisition strategies.”
CBRE’s Pacific President and CEO, Ray Pittman, said that the restructure and new appointments were indicative of the strength of the national hotel market.
“The hospitality sector has been one of the most resilient asset classes in Australia and this has underpinned significant investor interest in hotel investment opportunities,” Mr Pittman said, noting that a record $3.87 billion in hotels traded in Australia in 2015.
“With strong ongoing investor demand, particularly from Asia, we have had an ongoing focus on building our team and further strengthening our platform to ensure that we are providing the highest level of support and real advantage to our clients.”
The national hotels team now tallies at 38, with localised operatives in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.