Sydney set for biggest hotel boom since 2000

[SYDNEY] Fourteen years after the last major hotel opened in Sydney's centre, 42 developers are competing to turn a pair of century-old government office buildings into accommodations as demand soars.

Elsewhere in the city, developers including China's Greenland Holding Group and Singapore-based M&L Hospitality Trust plan to add more than 5,300 rooms during the next five years. If they are completed, the city's supply of rooms will rise by about 20 per cent by the end of the decade - the most since Australia's largest city hosted the Olympics in 2000, according to broker CBRE Group's hotels division.

Hotel construction is picking up as the number of visitors to Australia grows at the fastest pace in at least nine years, sending occupancies in Sydney to a record and the highest in Asia after Hong Kong and Tokyo. Sydney's average hotel occupancy is set to reach 88.8 per cent by end-2016, the highest since at least 2000, according to economics advisory firm Deloitte Access Economics.