A hotel, a precinct, and a striking new artwork at Busselton Foreshore
- Ashley Kerfoot
- Oct 20, 2025
- 2 min read
I visited Hilton Garden Inn Busselton recently and it was great to see the public art out front now in place.
The piece is by Perth artist April
Pine, whose practice explores movement and layered silhouettes. It gives the foreshore entrance a strong sense of arrival and it sets the tone for the hotel.
In my Business News piece at opening and a LinkedIn post, I covered how the hotel came together and the role it could play for the broader foreshore. It is encouraging to see the project settling into the precinct with another layer of quality at the ground plane.
April Pine’s contribution
Pine’s work invites people to slow down and move around it. The slatted planes and negative spaces read differently from each angle, which works well against the bay and the jetty backdrop. As a threshold element it frames the hotel entrance without overwhelming it.
A real estate view on why this location works
With experience in mixed use precincts, my view is simple. Hotels complement activated places. They do not create activation on their own. For a hotel to be viable and to perform, key catalysts need to be in place first.
Busselton Foreshore is a textbook case. The city invested in public realm upgrades, play spaces, paths, hospitality, and cultural infrastructure. Those investments created reasons to visit across the day and across the year. With that base in place, a well located hotel can amplify the existing energy, extend dwell time, and capture visitor spend that is already flowing through the precinct.
That sequencing matters. Infrastructure and amenity first. Then a hotel can lean into existing demand and help sustain it. Busselton Foreshore shows how coordinated public investment and private development can work together to build a strong precinct identity. The hotel benefits from that foundation, and the precinct benefits from the hotel’s steady flow of guests.
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