Ingenia’s holiday park market is booming!

Formed in 2012 Ingenia Communities Group (ASX:INA) is a diversified real estate investment trust (REIT) with a portfolio of assets covering lifestyle, tourism and retirement living. In the latest small cap management video series, Gary Rollo catches up with Chief Executive Officer, Simon Owens to discuss key holiday park markets and the groups’ revenue streams.

Ingenia has a focus on two aspects of the Australian property market, firstly on seniors housing and lifestyle communities and secondly, on holiday parks. The company has a rental income base of $2 million per week spread over almost 7,000 sites.

In the seniors housing business, Ingenia owns the lifestyle village where the resident owns the house. They own 26 seniors’ rental villages, and residents who are predominantly on the pension, pay weekly rent. In Australia there’s about 130,000 people living in this style of community and looking at the US, around 19 million Americans or 6 per cent of the entire population of America live in this style of community so there is a significant runway for growth.

In 2019 caravanning and camping became Australia’s most popular holiday choice with over 60 million total visitor nights and over 14 million trips. Australians last year spent around $65 billion traveling overseas. With international travel off the agenda for a while, this sector of the domestic economy will be a beneficiary. In the holidays business, Ingenia owns and operates 21 holiday parks on the New South Wales and Queensland coast.

“COVID has been transformational for our holiday park business. Back in the early days, we had to shut down our holiday parks and we lost the entire Easter trade which is probably our busiest couple of weeks of the year outside of Christmas. Since early June, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland, the markets really exploded and the demand for affordable accessible holidays in Australia, particularly beach front holidays is growing almost exponentially and so now our forward bookings through Christmas and Easter next year are up 70 per cent on last year’s record numbers.” Simon Owen, Chief Executive Officer

You can also read more about Ingenia Communities Group and the tailwinds from increased domestic tourism and an ageing population in an article we published in November: GOOD TIMES AHEAD FOR INGENIA COMMUNITIES

We will be posting Part 2 in early-January outlining the group’s growth strategy.

Not already a Livewire member?

Sign up today to get free access to investment ideas and strategies from Australia’s leading investors.