Top hotel goes to Aussies for 5-star price

New Zealand's largest hotel has been sold for $96 million to an Australian company.

Carlton Group, owned by the Li family of Hong Kong, sold the 455-room Carlton Hotel at the intersection of Mayoral Drive and Vincent St in central Auckland to ASX-listed Abacus Property Group, which bought Christchurch's Chateau on the Park this year.

Abacus managing director David Bastian said the hotel had been sold with vacant possession.

This means its management contract is up for sale, and groups understood to be interested in it include Sheraton, Marriott, InterContinental and Sofitel.

Mike Batchelor, executive vice-president of Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels, which represented the vendor, said the deal was New Zealand's most expensive hotel sale, outstripping the $80 million paid for the Regent Hotel, also in Auckland, in 1995.

Bastian said the Carlton was developed in the 1990s. A $35 million extension was completed in 1998, and improvements worth about $2 million had been made in 2004 and last year.

Abacus, which owns properties valued at A$1 billion, has no other hotel properties in New Zealand.

Jay Gui, group general manager of Carlton Group in Singapore, said the Auckland hotel sale was in line with a plan to streamline the business which had a focus on Asia and Australia.