Manuka's 192-room hotel has no confirmed operator or opening date

The Liangis family’s 192-room hotel on the former Manuka cinema site has had its exterior repainted and paving is going down, but the developers would not answer questions this week about an opening date or who will operate it, The Canberra Times reports.

Why it matters

The site sits in the middle of Manuka, on the footprint of the old cinema, and the project has been dogged by controversy. Rumours about its operator grew after Sotiria Liangis, one of the developers, said last year that a “big international company” would run the finished hotel, without naming it. Neither Mrs Liangis nor her son John, who is also involved in the project, has named an operator since. A spokeswoman for Hilton told The Canberra Times the group has “no new Canberra development to confirm,” a line that rules nothing in and nothing out. Whether talks between the family and any hotel brand took place, stalled or never happened is not established either way, and nothing here should be read as naming Hilton, or any other operator, as the hotel’s eventual manager. A 192-room hotel with no operator on record leaves agents, suppliers and nearby hospitality operators without a clear read on who they will be dealing with once the doors open.

The numbers

Mrs Liangis described the project last year as a 192-room, five-star hotel. Plans for the hotel include a restaurant and bar, conference rooms and a ballroom, The Canberra Times reports. Back in May, the developers told The Canberra Times the hotel was on track to open “this year.” With roughly nine weeks of 2026 left and the developers not responding to further questions, that timeline has not been revisited or withdrawn publicly. No operator agreement, star rating, room rate or fit out contract has been disclosed, and no revised opening date has replaced the May promise.

What’s next

Exterior work, including new paving and a repainted facade, is under way, but windows show rooms with no fittings, furniture or carpet behind them, some covered by shutters or curtains. That gap between finished exterior and bare interior points to a longer run to opening than the May timeline implied, regardless of who ends up running the hotel. Until the Liangis family or an operator goes on record, any Hilton link stays unverified rumour, not fact, and AusDev will update this story if either side confirms or denies it. For Manuka precinct watchers, the practical signal is the widening gap between what is visible from the street and what the developers will say, a gap that will need to close well before a 2026 opening is realistic. Hospitality operators weighing bookings, staffing or event partnerships around the hotel have little to plan against until the family names an operator or revises the May timeline, and the longer that silence runs, the further an opening inside 2026 slips from plausible. The hotel’s exterior progress sits against a broader Canberra construction pipeline that has kept cranes up across the city this year, detailed in our report on Canberra’s Q3 crane count, even as individual projects like this one run on their own, unannounced schedule.