18 Jun 2024
Words John Miller Informer

Winds of Change

Winston Hall left a secure corporate career at Accor to venture out on his own with Seabreeze Resorts, a private equity group with an appetite to grow its management rights portfolio beyond the Sunshine Coast.

Since starting Seabreeze Resorts in February 2023, Winston Hall has spearheaded the group’s management rights holdings to an enviable portfolio of five premium businesses on the Sunshine Coast.

The group’s latest acquisition, Allure Mooloolaba, transacted through ResortBrokers’ Sunshine Coast team of Chenoa Daniel and Glenn Millar, settled in May. Allure follows Seabreeze’s earlier purchases of Seaview Resort and Breeze Mooloolaba (whose amalgam gives Seabreeze its name), The Rise Noosa in Noosa Heads and Coco Mooloolaba, which shares an exclusive Mooloolaba Esplanade address with Allure.

Before Seabreeze, Hall enjoyed a solid, three-decade career in hotels, starting with Pan Pacific in 1993 and culminating with global giant Accor, where he was Vice President Operations on the Sunshine Coast for the last five years. Hall landed at Accor in 2018 via its acquisition of Mantra Group, where he had spent 11 years as Regional General Manager for North Queensland.

It was a good life and highly satisfying, says Hall. But with a second-hatch family in tow, the desire to cut down a frenetic travel schedule to oversee 72 properties in his charge, and a yearning to try something new, Hall decided it was time to go out on his own.

“Because I’d been involved in management rights through Mantra and Accor, I had a good understanding of how it works,” says the 49-year-old. “I’d always thought I might one day venture into having my own investments.”

“I was part of Mantra’s journey from its formation through to its sale to Accor, and it was a really fascinating experience. It showed me that you can control your own destiny, create your own business.”

From his time at Accor/Mantra, Hall learned the importance of diversification in a property portfolio.

“Mantra was extraordinary successful at assembling a roughly 50/50 split of leisure and corporate properties that allowed it to ride through whatever was happening in the economy domestically or internationally and to continue to grow year on year. One market was normally pretty hot somewhere and that would help lift the company for the markets that weren’t performing so well. Obviously, diversification was key to that success. Equally, diversification is incredibly important to Seabreeze as we grow.”

Hall formed Seabreeze, a syndicate of 15 investors, early in 2023 to buy the management rights for the 51-apartment Seaview in February that year. The acquisition of the 57-apartment Breeze followed shortly after in March. In September, came the 39-apartment The Rise. The 47-apartment Coco Mooloolaba and 31-apartment Allure followed in November 2023 and May 2024, respectively. Except for Seaview, all properties have been bought through ResortBrokers.

Hall says Seabreeze is on a growth path and keen to diversify its interests beyond the Sunshine Coast.

“We have a great footprint now on the Sunshine Coast,” he says. “If we’re going to continue to grow, which we have the appetite to do, Brisbane is the obvious location. In the next 10 years, the city will host the Olympics. But even without it, Brisbane’s fundamentals are incredibly strong and will be for some time.”

“The Gold Coast is also on our radar. It’s a highly competitive market but we feel the southern end of the Gold Coast, particularly Coolangatta and Burleigh, has a lot to offer. If the right asset came along, certainly we’d be keen to look at it. Obviously, as we acquire more assets and are successful in those destinations then maybe we’ll look further afield, but for now our focus is South East Queensland.”

Raised in the country just outside Brisbane, Hall gravitated to the Sunshine Coast in 2007 following a seven-year stint as general manager of Outrigger Resorts & Hotels’ properties in Palm Cove and Port Douglas. For the last five years, he has served as board director of Visit Sunshine Coast, the peak tourism body for the region.

Hall says the transition from corporate life to managing his own portfolio has been incredibly rewarding because it puts him in direct contact with guests and owners.

“In a corporate role, you spend a huge amount of your time in meetings, particularly Zoom meetings, with people all across the country and the globe. It’s extremely interesting and you learn an enormous amount from those interactions, but fundamentally you’re quite removed from guests and owners. Often the time I engaged in any meaningful way with guests or owners was when there was a substantial problem!”

“Now, I’m directly looking after guests. You can see they’re having a great time and that you’re contributing to their enjoyment. It’s the true essence of hospitality and why I joined the industry originally.”

“The other benefit is you’re able to help owners. We have fabulous owners in our portfolio, and I have the ability to influence improvements to their assets and their performance. That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning because it’s challenging but also fun.”

In terms of what Seabreeze looks for in a management rights business, Hall says it comes down to basics.

“A quality asset in a fantastic location in a fantastic destination. That’s the three fundamentals. That, and a reasonably good net profit. We’re not looking at too small a business. We’re looking at bigger businesses where we think it’s worth our time and energy to get those businesses really humming along. It’s a bit hard at times to find the right businesses and make the numbers stack up, but that’s what we’re chasing.”

Key to Seabreeze’s strategy is having operators who have a personal stake in the group’s properties through the caretaking role. Seaview and Breeze are both operated by a syndicate member. Another syndicate member runs Coco and Allure. Hall is based at The Rise, which he runs as well as using it as Seabreeze’s base of operations.

“As we grow, where it makes sense to do so, we’re bringing in operators who are employees but also investors in the syndicate,” says Hall. “So, they have their own skin in the game because they’re operating those businesses. That’s the model we’re pursuing, bringing investor-operators in.”

Despite a solid hotel background of more than 30 years, Hall admits to a steep learning curve when it came to buying his own management rights business.

“I’d been part of large corporate transactions before, but we had lawyers, finance people, acquisitions people who did their part before and during due diligence,” says Hall. “I didn’t understand how to go about buying my own management rights. I was part of the team integrating acquisitions into the business, which I did a number of times, but getting to the point of going, ‘This is a good deal, and this is how we’re going to fund it,’ I never had any direct experience of that.”

An industry acquaintance referred Hall to veteran management rights consultants Mike Phipps and Tony Rossiter of Transaction Management Consultants.

“When I was in the discovery phase of learning how to go about buying my own management rights business, Mike and Tony were fantastic in providing the advice I needed to create a syndicate and also assistance with acquiring the right assets. Their advice and support through that process was invaluable. We still have a close relationship today and are looking at other opportunities to work together.”

Hall says if the transition from corporate life to management rights owner was achievable for him, then it is possible for others.

“Corporate employees in the hotel industry can absolutely make a similar step to mine,” says Hall. “And you never know they might become our next business partner in Seabreeze. There’s an opportunity for our industry to attract more talent from the corporate world. Corporate employees already know how to operate a resort, so they should be able to cross over quite well.”

“What’s the benefit of someone moving across from corporate? Being part of a large corporate business requires a high level of compliance with brand standards and operational processes. Being in a syndicate means they’re getting into their own business, they have their own money invested, however small or large that may be. They have an ability to make decisions quickly, be entrepreneurial and steer the business in the direction that will obtain the best outcome. It’s also a great opportunity to create some really good wealth of their own over the medium to long term.” END