![Will Creedon at one of the Port Stephens properties his company manages. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers Will Creedon at one of the Port Stephens properties his company manages. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/TFWurqJd3WWgt5tunziPf4/6f1b3e5a-6261-474d-846f-f1c9cc50b35b.JPG/r1173_548_4858_2994_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Former Tourism Hunter chairman Will Creedon plans to float his Alloggio short-term accommodation business on the Australian Stock Exchange late next year in a share offer which could value the company at more than $50 million.
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Mr Creedon, who owns a majority share in Alloggio with wife Karen Howard, is understood to have raised several million dollars in a pre-float funding round in recent days.
"We've hit our expectations, which is very, very encouraging. It gives us a lot of confidence, especially in a market that is what it is today," he said on Monday.
"Those funds are for growth. They're not for existing operations."
Media reports estimated the pre-float funding would raise about $2.5 million.
Mr Creedon would not divulge the dollar figure but said a "minimum" $50 million initial public offering (IPO) on the ASX would be "in the ball park" in late 2021.
"I believe we will comfortably exceed it," he said.
He said Alloggio could run one or two more pre-IPO offerings in the next 12 months.
Alloggio runs 11 hotels in the Hunter, Bega, Bathurst and Brisbane and manages other people's short-term accommodation listings on platforms such as Airbnb and its own websites.
Mr Creedon said the company saw opportunity in "mid-market" hotels in regional Australia and in re-purposing office buildings for short-term accommodation.
The former restaurant, bar and pub operator said he had launched Alloggio five years ago after identifying that planning authorities would not be able to cope with rising demand for short-term accommodation.
"I started thinking about how we could deliver accommodation differently by using technology and rethinking some buildings and how they're presented to the public.
"I doubled down and went for it."
He said COVID-19 had boosted domestic travel depending on the type and location of accommodation.
"Metro, capital cities, are still going through some terrible times," he said.
"And regional areas that rely on blue- and white-collar corporate stays, that's not going so well, whereas aspirational regional leisure areas are going through the roof, provided they're not next to the Victorian border.
"Holiday rentals in those aspirational areas have been fantastic. Hotels and motels in those areas less so."
He said inbound tourism had crumbled but now was the right time to reach out to markets in Asia.
"I'm quietly confident that over the next 75 weeks there'll be agreements with countries like South Korea, Taiwan, the Pacifics, Japan that would enable them to visit us.
"We're preparing for that. It's one of the opportunities that exist at the moment for the Hunter."
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