QHA_May_sm_for web

FEATURE
QHA REVIEW | 20
FOR THE PAST SIX YEARS, THE HOTEL LOCATED
AT THE NORTHERN END OF THE GOLD COAST, HAS
IMPROVED WITH EACH OWNER BRINGING THEIR
OWN SKILL SET TO THE BUSINESS.
“I was looking at trying to find a pub and Richard
Malouf was trying to find a pub, so John suggested
bringing us together and as we started looking at
hotels, John said he wanted to get involved as well.
“So we all decided to go thirds and a partnership
was basically born out of a hand shake and a cup of
coffee,” Matt said.
For the past six years, the hotel located at the northern
end of the Gold Coast, has improved with each owner
bringing their own skill set to the business.
“We’ve been partners for six and a half years now and
most importantly the partnership has been going really
well, we all get on and we all have our own strengths
that complement each other, we’re honest with each
other and have an appreciation of what the other
people bring to the business.”
When Matt, Richard and John originally sat down to
discuss their plan for the hotel almost seven years ago,
they predicted the development potential for the area
and so decided on a specific direction by which the
hotel would operate.
“When we bought the hotel during the height of
the GFC, we could see the potential to follow once
everything bottomed out. We could see all the vacant
land around the pub that had for sale signs, so we
knew in the next five years we were going to see a lot
of new houses going up as families and young couples
make the gated community their home.”
Traditionally, Hope Island was popular among retired
or semi-retired residents hailing from Victoria, however
more recently families have come to call Hope Island
home, making up approximately one-third of the
population according to the 2016 Census.
“As a general observation over the last five years,
we’ve seen that with the developments that have been
going on, more young families are coming into the area
which has been good,” Matt said.
Appealing to not only their local market but also
daytrippers, the three owners of the Boardwalk Tavern
focused their hotel on being a food-driven establishment.
Thanks to its location within the Hope Island Resort
and overlooking the glorious marina, one of the main
attributes of the Boardwalk is its beautiful outlook.
With palm tree-lined streets, yachts moored to jetties
and sunsets offering a kaleidoscope of colour in the
sky, the Boardwalk Tavern provides the perfect spot for
sitting back and enjoying the serenity of coastal life.
“We’re very much a food-driven hotel and we identified
that from day one. When we all sat down to buy the
pub, we asked each other what pubs we liked, what
were our favourite hotels and the common answer was
food-driven hotels,” explained Matt.
“The pubs we identified with were the ones that were