Award winning Alto Hotel on Bourke to be offered for sale

Melbourne, 05 August 2015 – Australia’s greenest hotel, the Alto Hotel on Bourke in Melbourne, has been listed for sale.

Opened in 2006, the iconic asset comprises 50 rooms across six floors, with a floor plate of approximately 480sqm providing a total area of 2,800sqm.

CBRE Hotels' Joseph Du Rieu and Scott Callow have been appointed to sell the asset via an International Public Expression of Interest campaign closing September 24.

The site was originally developed as the Railways Hotel around 1860, before being purchased by the Victorian Railways Union and demolished to construct its head office in 1914.  

“The building, which was constructed by members of the union offering free labour and utilising recycled material where possible, is rich in character and history,” Mr Du Rieu said

Purchased by hoteliers Ricardo and Suzanne Krauskopf in 1999, they redeveloped and significantly extended the building into a 4 star hotel.

Alto Hotel on Bourke opened for business in 2006 and remains Australia’s only 6 Star NABERS rated hotel. It has won several awards, including Conde Nast, Qantas, TripAdvisor, RACV and Tourism Victoria.

Mr Du Rieu said the sale represented an outstanding opportunity to acquire a property steeped in Melbourne’s history.

The property, which comprises a variety of room types from a three-bedroom three-bathroom loft apartment, to Queen en-suite hotel rooms, caters for a vast range of business and leisure travellers.

Mr Du Rieu said the Alto Hotel was a rare opportunity to acquire an established hospitality operation run on 100% renewable energy. 

“The market has not yet been tested with a hotel that dominates in the environmental stakes,” Mr Du Rieu said.

“Given the growing social conscience, we believe purchasers will be attracted by the sustainable nature of the investment.”

The property includes several key sustainability features including a nine-vehicle garage, which has electric car charging capabilities.

The Krauskopf family sold the business to a private operator approximately three years ago, with the freehold interest now secured by an eight-year lease with a further six options of four years each, providing an attractive net income in excess of $800,000 p.a.

“We have been seeing record results achieved in terms of investment yields for hotel and hospitality assets, most notably the sale of the Imperial Hotel at the east end of Bourke Street which represented an initial yield of 3.5%,” Mr Callow explained.

“We are seeing an environment that could be considered a perfect storm with low local interest rates and a falling Australian dollar making foreign investment more attractive and therefore driving competition for accommodation assets in Melbourne and Australia as a whole.”