A looming hotel room shortage ahead of the 2032 Olympic Games has reignited calls for government action, with industry leaders warning that Queensland must accelerate accommodation delivery, planning and investment to secure a lasting infrastructure legacy.
The Property Council of Australia’s 2026 Queensland Hotel Market Outlook confirmed that QLD is off track to meet the State Government’s accommodation targets.
A probability-adjusted pipeline is set to deliver just 24 per cent of the 14,700 rooms required by 2032 and nine per cent of 40,000 room Destination 2045 target.
The council confirmed the opening of just one new hotel across Brisbane, the Gold Coast or the Sunshine Coast in 2025 in spite of rising room rates and sustained growth in visitor demand.
Property Council Queensland executive director Jess Caire said the findings reinforce that the accommodation crisis is structural.
“The demand is here, the global spotlight is coming, but the rooms are not,” Caire said.
“Queensland’s hotel markets are doing exactly what we would hope – attracting visitors, lifting occupancy and driving strong returns, yet the supply response has stalled completely.
“This year’s analysis confirms what last year’s report foreshadowed. This is not a short‑term dip or a construction hangover, it is a feasibility problem that is getting worse, and without intervention we will not maximise the opportunity ahead,” she said.
Well below target
The opening of 180-room Avani Mooloolaba Beach Hotel on 11 May 2026 marks the region’s second new hotel in the past 12 months.
Last week, the 148-room Adina hotel opened its doors in Chermside Brisbane after two and a half years in development.
To close the widening accommodation gap, the Property Council is calling on state and local government to take decisive action.
“We’ve seen before that when planning, tax and investment settings align, Queensland can deliver,” Caire said. “The challenge now is replicating that success in a much tougher feasibility environment.”
Looking beyond the games
Accommodation Australia CEO James Goodwin said the industry needs to take a more holistic approach to the issue.
“The Olympics is not just about those few weeks of the games. It’s about building new and better infrastructure that should support a visitor economy and a tourist economy well into the years and the decades after.”
With the eyes of the world fixed firmly on the Sunshine State, Goodwin said that planning decisions made now would have lasting consequences for the state’s tourism sector.
“Planning and tourism promotion strategies need to be well beyond the Olympics to ensure that there’s sustainable growth in the sector, and that we have the right number of properties, the right number of rooms, and an understanding of what sort of precincts they’re going to be to make sure that they are not just sitting empty or under-utilised after the games have ended,” he said.
Goodwin said that certainty for planners and developers will be critical, particularly as Olympic infrastructure projects and private developments compete for the same construction workforce.
“The sector needs more certainty. We need support for things like development applications, fast tracking approvals. They would go a long way to help kickstart more investment, as well as assistance with construction costs and workforce pressures,” he said.
Shaping Queensland’s infrastructure legacy
Managing director of Therefor Group, Andrew Crawford, said that the accommodation challenge could become an opportunity to deliver lasting infrastructure benefits for the Sunshine State if governments and planners focus on long-term outcomes.
A member of the Property Council of Australia QLD Planning and Infrastructure Committee, Crawford said that accommodation solutions should be considered alongside broader housing and precinct planning objectives.
“There’s opportunities to be strategic about where we locate short-term accommodation so that when we’re making decisions about short-term accommodation they are sustainable in the long term.
“Planning for those precincts is important in terms of providing opportunity for housing particularly,” he said.
Crawford said that adaptability, diversification and innovation are essential ingredients to solving Olympic accommodation shortages in the short term.
“There’s a whole range of strategies that have been employed in the past: student accommodations, opportunities for home-based accommodation, people leasing their homes out and cruise ships at terminals becoming floating hotels.
“We will need to rely on the broader region of the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, as well as other locations like Ipswich, Logan, Redlands and Wynnum.”
He added that the bayside suburb of Wynnum in particular highlighted an opportunity to repurpose short-term accommodation developments into new housing after the Games.
“We are talking about providing a peak here for accommodation and a lot of investment in buildings where we need to think about what the long-term opportunities are.
“The financial model to build and retain and hold hotel accommodation may not work in some instances, so are there other ways to look at that repurposing and diversification. A lot of that has to be driven by the government.”
Crawford said the Olympic opportunity has the ability to leave a positive legacy of infrastructure for the existing residents of Brisbane and beyond.
“There’s a legacy infrastructure that is left there around sporting infrastructure, tourism infrastructure and enhanced public transport, new precincts and areas of amenity. Those sorts of opportunities and benefits for residents are mutually compatible with delivering the Olympics games requirements.”
