The freehold going concern of the stately Tourist Hotel in Queanbeyan has come to market, as regional strongholds continue to see the greatest pandemic rebound.
The Tourist is set on a large 1,928sqm block on main drag Monaro Street in the centre of town, beside a pedestrian thoroughfare to a large council carpark.
It features a public bar, bistro, outdoor gaming room and beer garden at street level, and 18 accommodation rooms, a shared kitchen and a manager’s unit upstairs, with a late-trading 3am liquor licence Monday to Saturday.
Included are the 16 gaming entitlements, seeing increased performance in recent years to put the pub at #449 on the Liquor & Gaming list of NSW hotels.
This campaign is thought to be the first time a pub in Queanbeyan has been formally put to sale in almost a decade, being offered by a well-regarded and private local family that have owned it since 2009, who are now looking to focus on other business interests on the south coast.
Queanbeyan is a three-hour drive south-west of Sydney, or just ten minutes from Canberra airport.
The Tourist benefits from being one of a comparatively low number of gaming pubs in the region, all performing well, but also from its proximity to the Capital, which does not allow gaming in pubs. The Queanbeyan catchment jumps to around 430k people if taking in Canberra’s 370k residents.
In recent times the family has rarely traded the pub past 11:30pm, yet trading figures show average weekly turnover since the pandemic shutdown of approximately $65k. This excludes bistro takings as the foodservice operation is currently leased, offering potential further upside for the right operator.
The Tourist comes to market with price expectation north of $9 million, at a time when many tourist-centric hotels within easy reach of capitals are reporting trade surpassing this time last year.
“Queanbeyan is a patently high-performing gaming area, and the pubs are commensurately tightly held; hence we are expecting a strong response from the sale process,” says HTL Property’s Blake Edwards, managing the campaign with national director Dan Dragicevich.
HTL report sustained influences on the national hotel market, driven by motivated activity “by industry paragons” atop inherently favourable conditions, notably low interest rates and accessible funding, rebounding trade post-COVID-19, and the sector’s historic resilience.
The Tourist Hotel Queanbeyan is being offered for sale via an on-market Expression of Interest campaign, closing midday 4 March.
