Crystalbrook Aurora will change the face of Garema Place. Photos: Crystalbrook Collection.
There are plenty of people in Canberra who might ask whether the city needs another 5-star hotel in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.
Putting aside the fact that most people who book 5-star hotels don’t usually have cash problems, others will say such edifices are examples of the Barr Government’s misplaced priorities.
Even the latest data from the Federal Government’s Tourism Research Australia might undermine confidence in demand for high-end accommodation in the ACT.
For the year ending September 2025, compared with 2024, international visitors to the ACT were up 5 per cent, but their spend was down 4 per cent.
Domestic visitors to the ACT were down only slightly at 1 per cent, but they spent much less – 14 per cent in fact.
So, overall, we might be attracting more visitors to the national capital, but they are not pulling out the card as much, and that includes, presumably, for accommodation.
But international hotel chains such as Dubai-founded Crystalbrook Collection don’t make investments such as its Aurora hotel in Garema Place lightly, nor do they rely on the vagaries of year-to-year visitor data.
Crystalbrook Collection CEO Geoff York, who understands the Canberra market well, having previously managed the Park Royal/Crowne Plaza hotel, acknowledged the risk of seasonal fluctuations in visitor numbers and noted the importance of not relying entirely on hotel room bookings.
In addition to 225 rooms, the hotel will feature five dedicated conferencing and event spaces, including a venue capable of hosting up to 300 guests.
“We intentionally put in the conference space here,” he said. “We really see that as an important part of the business for the hotel.”
This also includes the Canberra community in the business plan, providing another premium venue in the heart of the city for celebrations and cultural gatherings.
Canberrans will also benefit from hospitality and retail options, with the popular Raku restaurant announced as an anchor ground-floor tenant while a “significant” retailer will soon be revealed.
On the top floor, another to-be-announced fine dining venue will offer birds’ eye views of the city, while pioneering cafe institution Gus’ Place will make the hotel its new home.
The Crystalbrook Aurora entrance on Bunda Street.
The Garema Place hotel had frustratingly been on the drawing board for years, first with Geocon, then TP Dynamics, which wasted no time getting on with the project after it acquired the site and already-approved plans.
This week marked the topping out of the 10-storey building, and the start of the facade and fit-out stage, with completion due by the end of the year. The hotel is set to open in early 2027.
City Renewal Authority CEO Craig Gillman says it will be a game-changer for the city.
“Having a destination hotel in the heart of our city, a 5-star destination hotel, will bring tourists. It’ll bring energy. It’ll be a wonderful place for the people of Canberra to go to your favourite restaurant, Raku, as it reimagines itself,” he said.
Aurora will be a dramatic and welcome change for Garema Place and the surrounding areas, some of which are, frankly, in need of love.
Business precincts have long suffered from being outside of the monster mall that is the Canberra Centre, which dominates the CBD.
The new hotel and its influx of guests will help shift some of that focus, have positive flow-on effects for other businesses, and attract new ones.
Together with the recently completed amenity upgrades to Garema Place, the hotel will help modernise and elevate the area’s ambience, making it a more comfortable and safer place to be, encouraging more Canberrans to enjoy their city.
The CRA is doing its bit to make the city a more comfortable experience, such as transforming it into a shaded, green pedestrian artery with plenty of seating and tables.
But government can only do so much.
Private investment, such as the hotel and other projects nearby, is vital to making the city a beating heart.
A 5-star hotel might seem a luxury, but it will be a catalyst for change in an area desperately in need of it.
Some might miss the old CBD, but a city of asphalt car parks and tacky shopfronts was not worthy of the national capital.
What emerges from the difficult labours of the current capital works will be a new city that better reflects this century, not the last, and Crystalbrook Aurora will play a role in that.
