He has set up the office for Australian-based Chroma Group, whose experience across Australia and New Zealand ranges from three-star to luxury hotels, resorts, restaurants, casinos and the conversion of office buildings into hotels.
During nine years in Queens-town, Summer has project-managed for the likes of Cook Brothers Construction, Queens-town Airport, The Building Intelligence Group and Octa.
He says Chroma Group focuses on hotel/hospitality fit-outs, ‘‘and a little bit of wellbeing as well’’.
‘‘Generally, we’ll take it from sort of a base build right the way through.
‘‘We’re very much a client-focused approach.’’
There’s ‘‘not too much’’ in the way of local competition, Summer says.
Chroma Group’s first local project is converting Holiday Inn Express into an upmarket ‘voco’ hotel by the end of June.
This includes expanding the food and beverage offering and enlarging the kitchen, accordingly, creating a dedicated reception area and building a larger bar where it’s been, and ‘‘doing kind of a light touch upgrade to all of the guest rooms’’.
Summer expects there will be further opportunities with more Queenstown hotel projects on the horizon.
‘‘There’s a lot of Australian investment in hotels in Queens-town, like now and in the next few years.
‘‘And because Chroma Group originates from Australia, Melbourne and Sydney, we’ve got some existing clients and relationships there.
‘‘So we’re hoping to repeat the success we’ve had with them in Melbourne and Sydney, in particular, over here.’’
