The Northern Territory government will pay a private company nearly $250,000 to begin "travelling around the world" to try to find someone to build a new Darwin hotel.
The government is opening up a prime piece of Darwin waterfront land for a new high-end hotel to be built on Darwin Harbour, providing it can find someone to back it.
If it happens, the government said the new hotel would sit adjacent to the Darwin Convention Centre, to capture tourists along with events and business travellers.
Chief Minister Natasha Fyles said the government was now seeking expressions of interest and had hired "commercial real estate and investor specialists" CBRE Hotels to begin "travelling around the world to engage hotel specialists so that we can get a brand here and get construction under way".
"It is our government's job to drive that investment and to leverage that private sector investment so that we can then get further investment," Ms Fyles said.
"The Waterfront is a great attraction for locals and visitors, and this hotel, stepping forward, is a key part to the expansion of the Waterfront."
The government said the contract with CBRE Hotels will cost NT taxpayers $248,000.
The hotel is the latest luxury prospect floated for the Darwin Waterfront area following a number of big picture government ideas over recent years that have never come to fruition.
Last year, a planned "six star" resort run by Chinese-owned firm Landbridge was shelved, with the company blaming economic factors, along with COVID-19.
In 2017, the Labor government spent $500,000 in taxpayer money to prepare a feasibility study to build a water theme park in the same precinct – a plan that all but sunk by 2019.
Former MLA describes plan as 'concerning'
Former Labor government MLA Scott McConnell, who was in parliament during the water theme park and Landbridge hotel period, described the new hotel plan as "really concerning".
"The last thing that Darwin needs is more taxpayer subsidisation of more developments we can't afford in the Darwin foreshore," Mr McConnell said.
"The Northern Territory government needs to be a government for all Territorians, all the time, and really, we should be focused on remote and regional locations."
The government said the new hotel would be a benefit to the NT's overall economy, saying that it would "provide ongoing jobs in the tourism hospitality sector".
The search for a backer for the 200-250 room hotel will begin in the coming weeks, but the timeline around when CBRE Hotels would have to deliver a possible client was unclear.
