Jerry Schwartz sets up Sydney’s next luxury hotel ahead of James Packer
Hotel mogul Jerry Schwartz is opening the five-star, $500 million Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour next week.
And it will be big, not least because he has beaten James Packer in the race to set up Sydney next luxury hotel.
Mr Packer’s six-star, $2 billion hotel-casino at Barangaroo, across from Darling Harbour has received all the publicity.
But the bottom line is it has hasn’t yet been built.
And Mr Schwartz, who owns Crowne Plaza hotels in Newcastle and Hunter Valley, along with the Novotel on Newcastle Beach, is revelling in that.
“It’s a huge accolade to be the first new international five-star hotel to open this millennium,” Mr Schwartz told the Newcastle Herald.
“The project has gone ahead brilliantly and we are just doing the finishing details on the hotel.
“In fact, when we look across Darling Harbour towards Barangaroo, it doesn't seem James’s hotel has come out of the ground as yet.”
Indeed, according to the latest estimates, Mr Packer’s hotel is another four years away. The 275-metre high building will be complete in 2021.
For Mr Schwartz, that makes the opening of his hotel ahead of Mr Packer’s Barangaroo project “really special”. He concedes he always felt a certain rivalry with the casino proprietor.
“It’s always good to be the first and it has been really important to get the [Sofitel] hotel to open to support Sydney’s new International Convention Centre, which is next door,” he told the Newcastle Herald.
“From now until James’s hotel opens there will be some 40 new hotels opening in Sydney, so the city is going to experience a revolution in hotel accommodation.
“Packer might have been one of the first to talk about new hotels for Sydney, but we’re going to deliver the goods long before his hotel opens.”
Still, he says Mr Packer’s hotel will “attract a very specific crowd, particularly from Asia”.
“It will be a tremendous addition to the market and by 2020, I am sure Sydney will be in need for new high-quality rooms,” he says.
by Leon Gettler, September 25th 2017
