Luxury hotel chain Sofitel hopes to open two or more additional hotels in Australia, bringing its total to at least six, the group's worldwide chief executive says.
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Robert Gaymer-Jones, who was in Australia last week to visit the group's hotels and scout potential new locations, also said he hoped to renovate the ageing Sydney Wentworth Sofitel.
He said that while in Australia he would be talking to the existing owners of hotel properties managed by Sofitel and meeting with potential new investors.
"We have four hotels right now – I could easily see us having two or three more hotels in this market," he said.
He ruled out mining boom town Perth as an option in the short term, but said Sydney or Melbourne would be good locations to build one of Sofitel's boutique So hotels, which each bear the signature of a high-profile architect or fashion designer.
"I would love to do a So in Sydney and if there was the right location I would love to one in Melbourne as well.
"The So brand is very much around fashion and design, so it would need to be in a high-end shopping area that is really focused on fashion and design, entertainment, restaurants and bars."
Since arriving at Sofitel, a subsidiary of French hotel group Accor, in 2007 as chief operating officer, Mr Gaymer-Jones has repositioned the chain at the top end of the luxury market, slashing hotels under management from 206 to 103.
He said he would be talking to the owners of the Wentworth Sofitel about renovating the property.
"Part of my role is to talk to the owners and talk up the opportunity of where renovation needs to happen," he said.
"Hotels go through cycles and different reasons why investment has not happened, so you have those conversations with the owners to show the benefits of the renovation.
"Part of the repositioning of the brand, the Sofitel, is to show that when you do a renovation you can improve the performance of a hotel."
He said Sofitel was also open to taking over management of an existing landmark hotel under its Legend brand, which includes historic properties such as the Metropole in Hanoi, Vietnam, and the Winter Palace in Luxor, Egypt.
'You've got traditional heritage hotels here in Australia that may be run independently but may look for a manager/operator to run it," he said.
"The thing that's great about Sofitel and Accor is that we can use all their distribution systems, they've got a power. They've got 700 sales people out there selling their hotels with a big distributions channel that an independent hotel cannot compete against."
