Westin Sydney sold for most expensive price-per-room
Asian investors have snapped up the majority of Sydney’s luxury city hotels, now including the Westin, which sold for an equivalent of $1.2 million per room.
The Westin Sydney is the latest to go under the hammer; sold to Singapore developer Far East Organisation and Hong Kong’s Sino Group for $445.3 million yesterday.
The deal includes the hotel’s adjoining Heritage Retail podium and is the second largest hotel in the city, per a report in The AFR, and the 416-room hotel will continue to be managed by Starwood Hotels & Resorts under the existing management agreement.
The latest purchase comes after another five-star city hotel, Sydney Hilton, which was bought by Asian investment firm, Bright Ruby for $442 million last month. 
The most recent sale brings the total of Asian capital spent on five-star hotels in the city to some $1.9 billion in the last two years alone, according to the paper.
“As one of Sydney most prestigious luxury hotels it was strongly contested by parties from Singapore, Hong Kong, China, the US and Korea,” JLL’s Craig Collins, who was one party overseeing the deal, said.
“When meeting hotel investors around the world, buyers now include Sydney in the discussion of key global markets they wish to invest in along with London, New York, Tokyo and Paris.”
Colliers International’s Stephen Burt told AFR the deal “represented a record price per room and demonstrated the strong outlook for Sydney’s hotel market”.
“The freehold equivalent price per room was $1.2 million and that puts Sydney into a different pricing league compared with the rest of Australia,” Burt told the paper.
Last year a Chinese insurance group bought Starwood’s sister property in the city, Sheraton on the Park for $463 million.
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