The Canberra Business Podcast
A podcast about all things Canberra Business.
The Canberra Business Podcast
Tuggeranong's Hidden Gem: How Punt Hill Hotel Apartments is Redefining Suburban Accommodation
Nestled in Canberra's southern suburb of Tuggeranong stands the area's first new hotel in 12 years. Punt Hill Hotel Apartments is breaking the mold of traditional accommodation and challenging assumptions about where business travelers want to stay.
Nick Bell, National Account Manager for Government at Punthill, joins us to reveal why this strategic location makes perfect business sense. "You'll never see us down at the rocks in Sydney," Nick explains, describing Varia Group's distinctive approach of targeting industrial and business hubs across Australia. With thousands of government employees working for Service Australia and the Department of Social Services in Tuggeranong, the demand for quality accommodation has been largely unmet—until now.
Whether you're interested in Canberra's evolving accommodation landscape, curious about strategic business location decisions, or considering a career in hotel management, this episode offers valuable perspectives on creating successful hospitality ventures beyond the typical CBD locations.
Hello and welcome to the Canberra Business Podcast. I'm Greg Harford, your host from the Canberra Business Chamber, and today I'm joined by Nick Bell, who's the National Account Manager for Government and Business Development Manager for Pantil Hotel Apartments in Tuggeranong, part of the Vario Group. Nick, welcome to the podcast, thank you for having me, Greg.
Speaker 1:Now there'll be a few people listening to this who are a bit surprised to hear that there's anything in Tuggeranong, let alone a hotel. So tell us a little bit about Puntil. What is it, how long have you been going and how's it going?
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly so. Punt Hill Tuggeranong was opened in early October. So what's that about roughly nine months that we've been open? Now? What we specialize in is fully furnished apartment style accommodation. So we specialise in long stay accommodation, relocations, economists as well. So we're a little bit different from your standard hotel. You know, with the one chair, a queen bed and a kettle per se, we're a bit more fully furnished with that relation for it. Yeah, so going on about nine months now that we've been opened up, for it's been going really well. It's nice to have a new property, especially down in Tuggeranong, which is, I believe, we're, the first property to open there in about 12 years.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's a good vote of confidence in the Deep South. Is it working well? Are you getting good occupancy through it? Yes, it is, is it?
Speaker 2:working well. Are you getting good occupancy through it? Yes, yeah, it is. It's working well. We've been getting a number of bookings coming through. Once again, people are generally surprised that there is any property down in Tuggeranong, which is a lot of fun, but you know, we're happy to be there in the area. We've been seeing a lot of growth, particularly with the government sector as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so why Tuggeranong? What's driven Varia Group to set up the hotel there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly. So our sort of direction with our properties is, I like to tell people like you'll never see us down at the rocks in Sydney. You'll find us in your industrial and business hubs located up and down Australia and so Tuggeranong being a huge market segment for government, so you've got a number of Service Australia buildings there, Department of Social Services as well, and then you also get a bit of overflow as well, with your defence staying there as well. So that's sort of the main direction that we're going with there. It's a fairly there's limited accommodation options there prior to us arriving, and so we've sort of been able to come in and sort of fill that gap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's actually a lot of government down in Tuggeran like Services. Australia has building after building Thousands of staff thousands and thousands of staff.
Speaker 2:And it's funny, yeah, with Canberra, when people think of government, they all instinctively think of Civic or you know the Brindabella Business Park as well. People tend to sort of forget there's actually even more of it further down the road, down in Tuggeranong. So, yeah, we're happy to be there. We love having them stay with us as well, and we're still getting people who are new to Services Australia being pleasantly surprised when they find out that we're now available as well in the area, which is amazing.
Speaker 1:Excellent, so what does your role involve?
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly so, as National Account Manager for government. So Punt Hill group, Varia group, we have a total of 25 properties up and down Australia and I manage the government accounts for it all. So that's obviously your federal government.
Speaker 1:Across the country.
Speaker 2:Across the country, yep, and also your state governments as well. So New South Wales, victoria, queensland and ACT as well. So I'm the one that's managing the contracts, liaising with any staff as well that need to sort of look at doing negotiated rates as well. So I manage all of the accounts. Essentially I'm the go-to person for them and, like I said, it's 25 properties, so it's a bit of a big broad stretch that I have to go across with, but obviously, tuggeranong being the only Canberra property that we have right now, we get the lion's share.
Speaker 1:And obviously your focus is on government business in your role down there. But is there a big kind of consumer traffic as well?
Speaker 2:that you get.
Speaker 1:Are you good overflow for people coming to visit friends and family here in Canberra?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Government obviously takes up the bulk of our accommodation bookings, but we have a number of corporate clients as well that we have staying with us in the area. So people working over in Hume and Queanbeyan as well we have them staying at the property, people in Woden, some people in Civic as well, when we get overflow during the busier periods, like when Parliament's back in town, and also some of the other projects that the ACT government is working on as well further down the road, like the big battery project, for example, has been going on for nearly a year now, so we get a number of them coming through as well. So we, I guess yeah, we are our nets a lot larger than we expected because it's a bit more spread out down there as, as you would have say, in civic, but it, like I said, it gives us a good opportunity to go out and capture people where we can.
Speaker 1:And what's your background? How did you get into this?
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly. So I have been in the hotel world for going on about 14 years now, I think, originally started at the Hyatt Hotel, canberra as a waiter and found out about the Blue Mountains Hotel School. And I was just, you know, being, I think I was like 18, 19 years old at the time didn't really know what to do, just like anybody else. And then someone mentioned to me that they had just graduated from the Blue Mountains Hotel School. I'm like well, what's that? And then they explained it to me and the stars sort of aligned, I guess, for it.
Speaker 1:The hotel world chose me, I didn't choose it, and some of our listeners might not know about the Blue Mountains Hotel School, so this is where you go to become a hotel expert.
Speaker 2:Essentially, yeah, become like a hotel manager per se. It's a full course. You've obtained a Bachelor's of Business in in hotel and international resort management from the two-and-a-half-year program. Also, through doing that as well, you get a number of placements. So I was able to go to Melbourne, go up to Cairns as well. It's allowed me to work up and down Australia as well. So it's part of the real fun aspects of being in the hotel world is the opportunity to move up and down the country or even internationally as well, like I have done. But at the end you always find yourself back home where you started.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and with your bachelor's in international resort management you've ended up down in Tuggeranong. Tell us are there particular challenges and opportunities in the Tuggeranong market?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, I think with the Tuggeranong market is. So the challenge is, obviously it can be it's further away from the CBD of Canberra, but on the plus side is sometimes a challenge, can also be a strength. So us being down there, we're tucked away. It's private, where people can sort of mind their own businesses as well. Easy access to and from the airport as well, so very minimal traffic that you have to deal with. So that's sort of the strengths that we tend to find. It's being able to keep people, yeah, tucked away in their own little private area.
Speaker 1:Now you've shown me through your property down there and it's effectively a brand new property, right, correct? Is that a real advantage for you in the market?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It's nice. Being the newest property on the market in the Canberra area Makes a great selling point, I suppose, for it. It's, yeah, I feel, being able to go in and offer, like, I guess, sort of a clean slate for people wanting to try out new properties as well. They may have one that they regularly go to and then, for whatever reason, they want to look trying somewhere else, we're in that position to be able to help them out as a completely brand new hotel.
Speaker 1:How are you using technology to enhance the guest experience or streamline your operations?
Speaker 2:Well, we're looking at doing keyless check-ins as well, so allowing people to download an app that they can just use their phone to get inside the property and up to their rooms as well uh, we try to keep everything all streamlined. And online paperless check-ins as well, uh, which also helps with our sustainability targets and ultimately, yeah, just just keeping everything as digital and platformed as and user-friendly as we can now I've seen keyless chicken arrangements offered by a few hotels around the world what?
Speaker 1:what's the customer reaction to those like in your experience?
Speaker 2:well it. It's always something new. Whenever there's something new that's brought on, you can always get a bit of pushback with it all, but ultimately it just comes down to how you can educate the guest as well. It's not as complicated as it looks. You've already got on your phone. You've got 50-odd apps. What's one more by having that access. Over time it becomes more and more easy, like you think of doing, like apple pay or something like that. That would have had push back to begin with as well. It's the same sort of principle, just over time people become more aware with it and then there's a bit more of a drive for it and then you realize it's how much easier it actually keeps everybody for you as well. If you, you know sometimes can happen is your key might, might deactivate if you had it next to I don't know a bunch of uh credit cards or a um electrical equipment or something like that. This is just your phone, so it'll be ready to go no matter what as well awesome and tell me about sustainability.
Speaker 1:Um, that's obviously something that's important in the hotel business. Um, how are you implementing sustainable practices? Uh, at Pantel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so, looking at doing once again paperless check-in as well, led lighting, anything that we can do to sort of bring those unnecessary costs with less advanced technology for it all Offering no-turn-down service as well, so that that's a big one, for waste is the amount of cleaning that has to go on with a uh with a hotel room. So taking away uh, allowing guests that opportunity to not have to do the sheets day in and day out, is a great way to look at saving water and electricity as well.
Speaker 1:Are you a big user of water and electricity?
Speaker 2:You must be. I don't have the exact numbers myself for it, but it's. It can be from time to time, especially this time of year, where it's incredibly cold, so you have a lot of heating. That's going on with it all.
Speaker 1:Everyone wants to stay warm at this time of year. Tell me a little bit about pricing From the outside. Hotel pricing can be a little mysterious and sometimes you can get different prices depending on where you're looking for essentially the same room. How do you go about balancing your pricing strategies between short stays, long-term corporate clients and more seasonal demand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, canberra. The pricing can change quite a fair bit, particularly if you've got Parliament sitting in the city, which is, I believe, about 40% of the weeks in a year that you'll have them coming over, so that can drive rates up and down. Supply and demand with it all. It's, yeah, something that's continuously sort of monitored and we try to always put our most competitive pricing forward as well. A big one for, like guests trying to save a little bit more, is by booking direct, going to the hotel's website, you can always look at finding better rates that are included as well. Offering, yeah.
Speaker 2:So another one that we do for competitive pricing as well is we can look at doing corporate rates that we have set up with the guests. So if people can sort of give a guarantee or are willing to commit to a sort of a room night accommodation provider, we can look at giving them static rates as well. So that's a good way that you can get around those higher priced periods as well. An interesting thing we like to do with clients that we sign up, that want to stay off our properties, is we have something that's called a rate shield. So obviously, yeah, rates can sometimes be rather expensive. Other times they can become quite low as well. So I don't feel it's right to be able to penalise a client by making them pay for their corporate rate if it's higher than an advertised rate. So one thing we like to offer is you get the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1:And that's great, because that sort of thing just leaves a really bad taste in the mouths of both worlds. So because that sort of thing just leads and leaves a really bad taste in the mouths of the customer right if you're, if you're paying more than uh than the advertised rate yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's not a good look and it's just like it makes. It makes zero sense. So that's why we have that. We have that policy in place as well, to be able to give people the best rates that we can do at any time um what role does customer feedback or online reviews play in your operations?
Speaker 2:It's an interesting question, so it always has a big impact as well. We always like to see what reviews we get from our guests. We're doing quite well right now we have, out of the 25 properties, tuggeranong has the highest customer satisfaction as well, so we must be doing something right.
Speaker 2:We must be doing something correct, but we value the feedback as well. So we must be doing something right, we must be doing something correct, um, but we, we, yeah, we value the feedback as well. It always gives at the at the end of the day, it's it's a. It's nice to hear if someone enjoyed their stay, but it's good to hear if someone didn't enjoy their stay, because then it gives you an opportunity to improve. Now, what, what may that have been? Uh, was it? Was it the check-in process? Or was the room not ready at the time? Which can, which can happen, you know, depending on how busy it is during the day, um, but it always gives you an opportunity to grow for it.
Speaker 1:So we always value any feedback that we can achieve do you find most customers, most guests actually fill out online reviews and surveys, or is it only it's more than you think?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's more than you think. Yeah, yeah and yeah, it's surprising the numbers that you have coming through, and whether that's, you know, your Google reviews or direct email feedback surveys as well, yeah, quite a fair few come through for it all and, once again, we always really appreciate it and any feedback is always appreciated because it gives you the chance to, yeah, look for an improvement. Feedback is always appreciated because it gives you the chance to yeah look for an improvement.
Speaker 1:What's one of the biggest sort of operational challenges that you've faced over the course of your career?
Speaker 2:Not including COVID.
Speaker 1:Well, COVID was a pretty big challenge for many businesses, wasn't?
Speaker 2:it? Yes, it was. I found the challenge of opening a new hotel in Tagredong to be really, really interesting because it was. I remember it quite well when I was first approached with Varia Group and they started to ask, it's like we're actually opening a hotel down in Tagredong, and I was like, hmm, that sounds interesting. And then we began to talk a little bit more about it and I was like, wow, this is actually a really good opportunity here for it. And I find that, with since opening the opening the property, being able to get the uh, being able to just get the, the brand awareness out to the local market and to the interstate travelers as well, letting them know that we are available, uh, that's that's one of the one of the more fun and exciting challenges that I've found. Operationally, it's a big it's. It's once again just getting past that stigma of yeah, we've got something in tuckernong now and getting people on board for it. That's that's been one of the more fun challenges and how have you gone about addressing that?
Speaker 1:what, what's been the, the trick to kind of get the message out there?
Speaker 2:repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, just going around educating people as much as I can where possible and sort of, I guess, trying to break that mould of the expectation as well. And we found that, looking at the channels that we have for federal government travel, getting out to them and meeting with them one-on-one as well just to educate them, and they're always constantly looking for new hotels into the market, particularly into Canberra. So that's been a big aspect of trying to get across the line with that one.
Speaker 1:And do you think I mean, as I say we sort of joke about the hotel at Takaradoga. There were people who genuinely didn't know you were there. But do you think there's growing demand for sort of those flexible apartment style accommodations in suburban centres more generally?
Speaker 2:I believe. So, yeah, absolutely, especially in Canberra. So a fun fact is we have the highest number of apartment style rooms of any other for hotels than any other city in Australia, and so there's definitely a certain demand. With it you're getting people for, especially if they're people from from government or people who are contracted with the government as well, having to come in and work in on projects, so they may need to be there monday to friday or a couple of weeks or a month, even six months as well, like we've had in some cases.
Speaker 2:By offering that home away from home sort of setup, it gives them an opportunity so that they they can, a bit more accustomed, they can cook their own meals as well, give that proper living style for it. So I've certainly found, especially in Canberra there's a big demand for it and people are constantly relocating to Canberra as well. So that's one of the fields that we can look at. Offering is someone's coming to Canberra but they may need somewhere to stay for I don't know, say a month as an example, while they can then go off and find an apartment to look and then sign a lease on. So we can be that little middle ground for them where they're moving, switching careers, coming to here, whether it be working for government defence or an extended secondment.
Speaker 1:All right, and how big is the team down there?
Speaker 2:There's about 18 of us in total yeah, that's everyone. So the lovely housekeepers, receptionists as well, management and myself.
Speaker 1:And if you were talking to someone who wanted to kind of get into the hotel business here in 2025, what advice would you be giving them?
Speaker 2:Do it, you're in for an adventure. This is definitely one of the industries where no day is like any other. You never know what's going to happen, and so there's always something really exciting that can happen with this. So I highly encourage it. If you're interested in starting a career, look. A number of hotels and companies will offer sort of mentorship, trainee programs as well. Then, alternatively, you've got the hospitality schools, like the Blue Mountains as well, that you can look at reaching out to sort of inquire about. But yeah, I highly recommend it. It's a very interesting world.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and you're keen for everyone to kind of get to know Pantel. If we want more information about it, where do we go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, certainly so. Go direct to our website, panteltagradongcomau. You'll be able to find more information there. Feel free to give us a call as well. Reach out directly to us and we'd be more than happy to have you.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. I'm Greg Harford from the Canberra Business Chamber and I've been talking to Nick Bell, who's the National Account Manager for Government at Puntalip Hotel Apartments in Tageranong, part of the Varia Group. Nick, thanks for chatting. Thank you for having me Appreciate it. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform for future episodes of the Canberra Business Podcast, and I'll catch you next time.