Tag: Australia

Big moves in holiday park sector

The rapid consolidation of Australia’s tourism asset ownership has continued with news motoring organisation NRMA has bought Australian Tourist Park Management and control of its 27 properties while it’s been reported the sector’s largest ever single park sale has just closed. The ATPM deal means the NRMA now owns and operates 34 caravan and holiday […]

Yury Shar, Director and Co-Founder, HotelsCombined

After immigrating to Australia from Russia at age 17, Yury developed a passion for computers and strategy games. This passion drew him to the University of Technology Sydney, where he studied Computer Science and met fellow HotelsCombined co-founder, Brendon McQueen. Before co-founding HotelsCombined in 2005, Yury spent five years working at HotelClub where he was […]

Wotif commissions to rise by 25% as Expedia rolls out new contract to hoteliers

Expedia is attempting to move all Wotif.com contracted properties onto a single company-wide contract and is raising site commission for larger producers from 12% to 15% – an increase of 25% – four months after buying the Australian OTA. “We are in discussions with them at the moment and there are a number of matters […]

Turu.com.au moves to booking engine and commissions

Holiday park site Turu.com.au has revamped its revenue model and will introduce a booking engine in the next few weeks, taking commission on each transaction. The move to a booking engine has come earlier than anticipated in the brief history of the site, launched in late July. General Manager Robert Gallagher said the roll out has been […]

New owner for The Ghan and Indian Pacific

Allegro Funds has bought Great Southern Rail, the loss-making owner and operator of  The Ghan, Indian Pacific and Overland trains and products, for just £2.5m from Serco, a troubled UK company selling non-core assets. Allegro, an active investor that looks for turnaround opportunities, has said it will keep the present management team. Serco said it sold […]

Lenoir takes the plunge, passes the CEO baton at Rezdy

Founder Simon Lenoir has made the big decision to step away from his day to day management responsibilities at Rezdy, handing the CEO reins to Chris Atkin, previously Chief Operating Officer. Lenoir, originally a software developer who has been working massive hours since starting the business in 2011, says he first thought of stepping back around […]

Australian short term rental booking growth leads the world

Leading short term property management platform Guesty reports that sector bookings in Australia grew faster than any other country during September. “In September, we saw a 5% increase in reservation volume worldwide compared to August,” the company said. “Australia had the biggest increase in reservation volume worldwide – up 25% month on month.” Guesty also revealed that […]

Veriu takes 16 years to become overnight success story

Opportunistic and casually ambitious – that’s one way to describe the team driving Veriu, a hotel brand that’s seemingly come from nowhere in the Australian marketplace, most recently winning the race to acquire the Punt Hill brand and leases on its 13 properties. But Veriu is anything but an upstart with roots stretching back to 2002 when […]

Tumbarumba proves NSW needs more rail trails

Tumbarumba – a sleepy timber, grape growing and grazing town in the bucolic Snowy Valleys of NSW – is undergoing a quiet tourism revolution. It’s all down  to a new ‘rail trail’ that’s attracted more than 12,000 riders since a low-key opening during peak-COVID last April. Now other towns in the region want to join […]

David Hammon, CEO and Director, Hammons Holdings

David is currently CEO and a Director of Hammons Holdings, the company which owns Australia’s most visited privately owned tourism attraction, Scenic World. Under David’s leadership, Hammons Holdings was recently appointed to operate tourism activities on the Sydney Harbour Bridge following a rigorous tender process driven by the NSW StateGovernment. The appointment marks one of the greatest […]