Millennium & Copthorne refurbishes portfolio, scopes unused land for growth

28th February 2025 By Natasha Jojoa Burling | natasha@propertyticker.co.nz | @propertyticker

Millennium & Copthorne Hotels New Zealand has refurbished a significant proportion of its portfolio and is considering how to use available land to take advantage of growing tourism.

The group reported on Monday an underlying profit after tax of $27.2m for the year ended 31 December 2024, with New Zealand hotel revenue up 8.3% year on year to $109.5m, as its average New Zealand hotel occupancy grew 5% to 66%.

The company operates or franchises 18 hotels across New Zealand and the Sofitel Brisbane Central Hotel in Australia.

Millennium & Copthorne Hotels NZ chief executive Stuart Harrison told the Ticker the company recently refurbished 390 of its 1700 hotel rooms, with recladding and other work nearly finished at Copthorne Hotel Palmerston North.

“Getting ourselves in that position of being prepared and being able to seize the opportunity to thrive as numbers return to, you know, more pre-Covid numbers,” Harrison said.

Millennium & Copthorne had been training and recruiting staff and Harrison said he was a strong advocate of the career path hotels could offer.

Stats NZ’s provisional Tourism Satellite Account showed tourism spending was $44.4bn in the year to March 2024, overtaking the pre-Covid peak of $41.9bn for the year to March 2020.

Harrison said it was good to see tourism expenditure growing and the government investing more in marketing.

“It’s something that hasn’t been around and has been lacking … whatever we can do to promote New Zealand to get people here is going to be helpful.”

With Air New Zealand’s plane capacity issues, he was glad to see other airlines finding more capacity to come to New Zealand, which fed into Millennium & Copthorne’s hotels. 

The company has identified unused land around its hotels in Rotorua, Palmerston North and Lake Wakatipu and was looking at how best to utilise that, including increasing the footprint of existing hotels.

Millennium & Copthorne’s purchase of The Mayfair hotel in Christchurch settled in late January and its branding will be “revisited” this year.

“We want to retain the essence of the hotel, but also being able to add to it some of the benefits that come from being part of a Millennium & Copthorne Hotels and Resorts family,” Harrison said.

It was the first year of 50% ownership of Sofitel Brisbane Central and M&C’s share of the profit was $1.51m.

There was a soft first quarter followed by strong demand across all major segments.

“If you get a drop off, it’s usually in the opening months of the year when people … exit Brisbane at that time,” Harrison said.

“After that, it just … hums throughout the course of the year.”

Millennium & Copthorne was investigating expanding in Australia.

In Whāngarei, the company was working through engineering, architectural and planning requirements after paying $2.2m for land for a new hotel in August.

Harrison said the company’s latest financial results demonstrated its resilience as a business. 

“We’re all looking forward to getting ourselves through the revive and looking to thrive.”

In its presentation to investors, Millennium & Copthorne said global and domestic economic recovery was expected from late this year but “timing and pace remains uncertain”.