British Flu - An interim read on Australia’s winter hotel performance, June to July 2026
- Nicholas Hurley
- Jul 25
- 7 min read
Last winter, the British and Irish Lions toured Australia. Nine matches across six capital cities, plus a spillover effect no one has yet properly measured. Twelve months on, the numbers are starting to show what that looked like — and what it looks like without the visitors this year.
The full tour schedule for reference:
Date (2025) | City | Match |
Sat 28 Jun | Perth | Western Force |
Wed 2 Jul | Brisbane | Queensland Reds |
Sat 5 Jul | Sydney | NSW Waratahs |
Wed 9 Jul | Canberra | ACT Brumbies |
Sat 12 Jul | Adelaide | AUNZ Invitational XV |
Sat 19 Jul | Brisbane | First Test |
Tue 22 Jul | Melbourne | First Nations & Pasifika XV |
Sat 26 Jul | Melbourne | Second Test |
Sat 2 Aug | Sydney | Third Test |
This is an interim read. The comparison window runs from Thursday 25 June 2026 to Saturday 18 July 2026 — 24 days, day-of-week aligned to Thursday 26 June through Saturday 19 July 2025. That covers the first six matches of the tour, ending on Brisbane’s First Test comparable. The Melbourne and Sydney comparables (matches 7-9) sit outside this window and will land in the next data drop.
The 25 June start is deliberate: it captures the two days before the Perth opener, giving us a proper run-in on the earliest event.
A follow-up post will cover the Test-week comparables once the 12 August 2026 data lands (the last day of the tour, Sunday 2 August, won’t be available until then).
All figures are aggregate over the 24-day window unless stated otherwise.
Melbourne — the control
Melbourne is the useful starting point. It hosted no Lions matches in the comparable window (its two fixtures both fall outside), so it’s the clean baseline for what a “normal” Australian winter looks like right now.
Occupancy: 74.6% → 73.1% (-1.5 points)
ADR: $213 → $209 (-1.8%)
RevPAR: $159 → $153 (-3.8%)
Revenue: $101.1m → $100.2m (-0.9%)
RevPAR is down 3.8% in Melbourne without any Lions distortion in this window. That’s the baseline drift. Everything else in this post sits above or below that number.
Adelaide
Adelaide hosted a single Lions match on Saturday 12 July 2025 (AUNZ Invitational XV).
Occupancy: 73.3% → 69.4% (-3.9 points)
ADR: $199 → $186 (-6.5%)
RevPAR: $146 → $129 (-11.5%)
Revenue: $26.7m → $22.9m (-14.3%)
Adelaide gave up ground on both sides of the RevPAR equation. Supply is also down 3.2% year on year, so the demand fall is deeper in absolute terms than the demand percentage suggests.
Brisbane
Brisbane’s window captured two Lions events last year: the Reds fixture on Wednesday 2 July, and the First Test on Saturday 19 July.
Occupancy: 78.1% → 78.2% (+0.1 points)
ADR: $290 → $258 (-10.9%)
RevPAR: $226 → $202 (-10.8%)
Revenue: $87.1m → $78.6m (-9.7%)
Occupancy held. Rate did not. Brisbane hotels filled beds without the Lions visitors, but the rate premium those visitors carried is gone.
Canberra
Canberra hosted the Brumbies fixture on Wednesday 9 July 2025.
Occupancy: 78.5% → 81.2% (+2.7 points)
ADR: $199 → $190 (-4.6%)
RevPAR: $156 → $154 (-1.4%)
Revenue: $29.4m → $28.6m (-2.6%)
Canberra found other business to replace the Lions demand — occupancy is actually up on last year — but the replacement demand accepted a lower rate. A rate-elastic swap, not a demand hole.
Perth
Perth hosted the Force fixture on Saturday 28 June 2025, the earliest match in the window.
Occupancy: 79.7% → 76.6% (-3.1 points)
ADR: $239 → $242 (+1.2%)
RevPAR: $191 → $186 (-2.7%)
Revenue: $45.9m → $44.6m (-2.8%)
Perth held rate but lost some fill. A single Saturday fixture early in the window shows up as a modest RevPAR softening. Broadly in line with the Melbourne baseline.
Sydney
Sydney hosted a single Waratahs fixture on Saturday 5 July 2025 in this window. The Third Test comparison, 2 August 2025, is still to come.
Occupancy: 79.4% → 78.9% (-0.5 points)
ADR: $280 → $282 (+0.7%)
RevPAR: $222 → $222 (+0.1%)
Revenue: $143.8m → $143.8m (0.0%)
In a market with more than 33,000 rooms, a single Saturday of rugby is easily absorbed. Sydney’s real Lions comparable arrives in the next data drop.
Gold Coast — the spillover check
Gold Coast hosted no Lions matches in either year, but it’s the obvious spillover market for international rugby visitors extending their trip with a leisure stopover. If the spillover thesis holds, this year’s numbers should be down.
Occupancy: 73.0% → 71.8% (-1.2 points)
ADR: $284 → $304 (+6.9%)
RevPAR: $208 → $219 (+5.2%)
Revenue: $107.4m → $112.6m (+4.9%)
Aggregate Gold Coast RevPAR is up 5.2% year on year. Rate led that growth (+6.9%), with occupancy easing slightly.
But the trend has flipped in the last nine days. From Friday 10 July through Saturday 18 July, Gold Coast RevPAR is down 4.9% year on year, with occupancy down 5.2 points. Rate is still holding (+1.7%), but the bookings have thinned. It’s an early signal, not yet a trend, but worth watching as the Test-week data lands.
Still to come
The next data drop picks up:
Melbourne First Nations & Pasifika XV (22 Jul 2025) → 21 Jul 2026
Melbourne Second Test (26 Jul 2025) → 25 Jul 2026
Sydney Third Test (2 Aug 2025) → 1 Aug 2026
The last day of the tour, Sunday 2 August 2026, won’t be available in the data until 12 August. Sydney’s number in particular will move once it lands. A Test Saturday in the SCG catchment is a much larger event than the Waratahs fixture that fell inside this window. A follow-up post will cover those comparables.
And a second bout of flu, later
The 2025-26 Ashes series between Australia and England ran from November 2025 through January 2026, in the same five capital cities that hosted Lions matches last winter: Perth (21-25 Nov), Brisbane (4-8 Dec, day-night), Adelaide (17-21 Dec), Melbourne (26-30 Dec, Boxing Day) and Sydney (4-8 Jan). Neither tour repeats this year. When the Nov 2026 through Jan 2027 comparables come around, the same markets face a second year-on-year hangover, in the same order.
Summary — all submarkets
24-day window, 25 June 2026 to 18 July 2026, year on year.
Market | Occ (pp) | ADR | RevPAR | Revenue |
Melbourne (control) | -1.5 | -1.8% | -3.8% | -0.9% |
Adelaide | -3.9 | -6.5% | -11.5% | -14.3% |
Brisbane | +0.1 | -10.9% | -10.8% | -9.7% |
Canberra | +2.7 | -4.6% | -1.4% | -2.6% |
Perth | -3.1 | +1.2% | -2.7% | -2.8% |
Sydney | -0.5 | +0.7% | +0.1% | 0.0% |
Gold Coast | -1.2 | +6.9% | +5.2% | +4.9% |
One thing worth flagging from a closer look at the revenue numbers: the declines in Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra are almost entirely concentrated in the event-window days themselves, not spread across the 24-day period.
City | Total 24-day Δ | Event windows Δ | Non-event Δ | Event share |
Adelaide | -$3.8m | -$3.4m (4 days) | -$0.5m | 88% |
Brisbane | -$8.5m | -$10.8m (7 days) | +$2.3m | 127% |
Canberra | -$0.8m | -$0.8m (4 days) | flat | 102% |
Perth | -$1.3m | -$0.6m (4 days) | -$0.7m | 48% |
Of Adelaide’s $3.8 million total revenue decline, $3.4 million (88%) came from the four days around the AUNZ Invitational fixture. Non-event trading was down $0.5 million across the remaining 20 days.
Brisbane is the sharper case. Total revenue declined $8.5 million across the 24 days. The event windows — four days around the Reds fixture plus three days around the First Test — accounted for a $10.8 million decline. Non-event trading was actually up $2.3 million year on year. Put another way: without the Lions event dates, Brisbane’s winter would have looked stronger than 2025, not weaker.
Canberra shows the same shape at a smaller scale: the $0.8 million decline is entirely from the four-day Brumbies window; non-event days finished flat.
For operators outside the event dates, the underlying market has held up better than the aggregate percentages suggest.
Event-level detail
For the operators who want the granular view — each Lions match analysed as a four-day window: two days before the match, the match day, and one day after. The Brisbane First Test window is truncated to three days because the post-event Sunday (19 July 2026) sits outside the current data cutoff.
Perth — Western Force (Sat 28 Jun 2025)
Event window: 25 to 28 Jun 2026 (Thu-Sun, 4 days)
Occupancy: 76.8% → 73.1% (-3.7 points)
ADR: $249 → $246 (-1.2%)
RevPAR: $191 → $180 (-6.0%)
Revenue: $7.8m → $7.2m (-7.8%)
Brisbane — Queensland Reds (Wed 2 Jul 2025)
Event window: 29 Jun to 2 Jul 2026 (Mon-Thu, 4 days)
Occupancy: 71.5% → 72.7% (+1.2 points)
ADR: $248 → $221 (-10.8%)
RevPAR: $177 → $161 (-9.3%)
Revenue: $11.4m → $10.4m (-8.2%)
Sydney — NSW Waratahs (Sat 5 Jul 2025)
Event window: 2 to 5 Jul 2026 (Thu-Sun, 4 days)
Occupancy: 79.4% → 82.1% (+2.6 points)
ADR: $292 → $297 (+1.7%)
RevPAR: $232 → $244 (+5.1%)
Revenue: $25.1m → $26.3m (+5.0%)
Sydney’s Waratahs window actually improved year on year. The domestic winter demand more than replaced the single-fixture rugby crowd.
Canberra — ACT Brumbies (Wed 9 Jul 2025)
Event window: 6 to 9 Jul 2026 (Mon-Thu, 4 days)
Occupancy: 85.7% → 83.9% (-1.8 points)
ADR: $204 → $181 (-11.2%)
RevPAR: $175 → $152 (-13.1%)
Revenue: $5.5m → $4.7m (-14.1%)
Adelaide — AUNZ Invitational XV (Sat 12 Jul 2025)
Event window: 9 to 12 Jul 2026 (Thu-Sun, 4 days)
Occupancy: 85.0% → 74.6% (-10.4 points)
ADR: $297 → $197 (-33.7%)
RevPAR: $252 → $147 (-41.9%)
Revenue: $7.7m → $4.3m (-43.7%)
Adelaide’s AUNZ window is the largest single-event decline in the interim data. ADR alone fell $100 across the four days.
Brisbane — First Test (Sat 19 Jul 2025)
Event window: 16 to 18 Jul 2026 (Thu-Sat, 3 days — Sunday 19 Jul 2026 outside current data cutoff)
Occupancy: 88.2% → 81.2% (-7.1 points)
ADR: $466 → $255 (-45.4%)
RevPAR: $412 → $207 (-49.8%)
Revenue: $19.9m → $10.1m (-49.4%)
Test week compressed at a completely different level to any other fixture on the tour. Brisbane hotels averaged $466 ADR across the three-day window last year. This year, the same three days cleared at $255. RevPAR halved.
Estimated impact — the final two games
Melbourne’s Second Test (Sat 26 July 2025) and Sydney’s Third Test (Sat 2 August 2025) both sit outside the current data window. The actual year-on-year numbers won’t land until the next data drop. But we can put a defensible range on what to expect using the 2025 event windows and each city’s underlying 2026 market drift.
The 2025 event windows for both cities were enormous:
Melbourne Test 2 4-day window: RevPAR $158 → $290, +83.4% year on year. Fri 25 Jul +103.0%, Sat 26 Jul +102.4%.
Sydney Test 3 4-day window: RevPAR $221 → $358, +62.2% year on year. Sat 2 Aug +64.7%, Fri 1 Aug +64.0%.
If 2026 event-window trading reverts to each city’s underlying market level (Melbourne currently -3.8% year on year across the wider 24-day window, Sydney essentially flat), the estimated impacts are:
Melbourne Second Test — estimated 4-day window
2025 window (actual): RevPAR $290, Revenue $30.8m
2026 window (estimated): RevPAR approximately $143, Revenue approximately $15.2m
Estimated year-on-year decline: RevPAR around -51%, Revenue around -$15.6m
Sydney Third Test — estimated 4-day window
2025 window (actual): RevPAR $358, Revenue $38.6m
2026 window (estimated): RevPAR approximately $224, Revenue approximately $24.2m
Estimated year-on-year decline: RevPAR around -37%, Revenue around -$14.4m
Together, the two Test windows alone could account for around $30 million of additional revenue decline against 2025, before Melbourne’s First Nations and Pasifika XV window (Tue 22 July, a smaller uplift of +17.9% in 2025) is added in.
These are estimates, not forecasts. The follow-up post will report the actual numbers once the 12 August data drop is in.
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