The Winchester Group has soaked up The Sun Hotel in Bryon Bay from the Flannery family’s KTQ Group for an undisclosed price.
The rich-listed Flannery family built The Sun on a generous 7,653sqm freehold landholding near Byron Bay’s North Beach, on arterial Bayshore Drive. It holds a full hotel licence, offering public bar and TAB, bistro and drive-through bottleshop, but no gaming.
It came to market in February looking to offers north of $10 million as the family and its KTQ Group shift focus to their nearby $120 million Elements of Byron development.
“We have really enjoyed building and operating this venue over the last six years and the community support has been great,” reports KTQ development director Jeremy Holmes.
“It’s time for another operator to take the reins and reimagine the offering. We’re pleased to see the Winchester Group step forward to do so.”
The Brisbane-based Winchester Group works with existing hotel owners and investors to improve the value of assets, and takes The Sun in partnership with a consortium of silent partners. The Group brings experience launching and operating iconic venues, such as The Regatta Hotel and The Normanby.
More recently it has been working on other venues in Byron, including coordinating and driving a major project at the Beach Hotel for Moelis Australia, which has seen a major uplift in the operation.
Moelis bought the Beach Hotel in the celebrity-rich shire in 2019 for a record-setting $103 million, and more recently the Short-Laundy partnership acquired the proximate Lennox Head Hotel for $40 million, against the backdrop of residential prices increasing more than 1200 per cent in the past two decades.
“The whole town’s running hot at the moment,” says Winchester director, Shaun Dunleavy.
“With Byron seeing major changes in recent years, we want to create a venue with strong roots in the community that’s welcoming to everyone, source suppliers locally and offer good old-fashioned value for money.”
The fading Sun reportedly needs a bit of love and the kind of shakeup that Winchester does, destined to see everything from the branding and bars to the beer garden “thoughtfully re-designed”.
Dunleavy sees good opportunity and a good future in the game, a year on from the crisis, imagining a customer-focused experience for both locals and visitors to Byron.
“I think the vital signs are coming back, it’s just a confidence thing now,” he says.
“A change of ownership will allow an opportunity for the venue to enter the next phase of its lifecycle and reimagine itself as a family-friendly environment and as one of Byron Bay’s iconic venues.”
The sale for the Flannery family was negotiated by CBRE Hotels’ Wayne Bunz and Paul Fraser, who have not revealed the price paid.
“Byron continues to be the most sought-after destination in Australia, and we continue to be inundated with enquiry for investors seeking a foothold in the northern NSW area,” said Bunz.
