The Land is our Amenity. The Economics of Emptiness and the Opportunity for Small-Scale Hospitality
I was reading the Australian Financial Review this morning and came across an article by Kaila Yu titled “Why 2,000 hectares is the new benchmark in high-end travel.” It immediately struck a chord. The premise was simple but powerful: luxury travellers are increasingly seeking privacy, seclusion and space.
It made me think about something our regional and rural communities have understood for generations.
The land itself is the amenity.
For decades, hospitality development has largely been driven by scale. More rooms, greater density, more facilities and ultimately a greater return from every hectare of land. In many circumstances, that model makes perfect commercial sense.
But perhaps there is another model emerging—one where the value isn't created by filling the landscape with buildings, but by allowing people to experience the landscape itself. I call it the economics of emptiness.
There is enormous value in being able to stand somewhere and see almost nothing man-made. A distant ridgeline. A paddock disappearing towards the horizon. Cattle moving across a property. A vineyard changing colour through the seasons. The silence of a rural morning.
These things cannot be manufactured by a hotel operator.
Regional Australia already has them.
Across the Hunter Valley, Upper Hunter and throughout regional Australia are extraordinary working properties: horse studs, vineyards, olive groves, cattle and sheep farms, orchards and agricultural businesses that have been established over generations.
Many of these properties already possess significant infrastructure, established ecosystems and, most importantly, owners who have a deep connection to and understanding of their land.
This is where I believe agritourism becomes particularly interesting.
We don't necessarily need to transform these properties into resorts. We don't need to introduce 50 rooms, restaurants, swimming pools and large hospitality facilities to make them commercially relevant to tourism.
Sometimes we simply need to give people somewhere extraordinary to stay.
Imagine a beautifully designed small retreat sitting within a 500-acre cattle property. Two accommodation pavilions positioned discreetly within a vineyard. A small architectural dwelling overlooking a horse stud. Three carefully separated retreats across a large agricultural holding, where each guest feels as though they have the landscape entirely to themselves. The building doesn't need to dominate the experience. The landscape is the experience.
This thinking sits at the heart of Boutique Builds.
After decades working in architecture and design, I became increasingly interested in how we could make genuinely considered small-scale architecture more accessible to landowners. Rather than starting every project from a blank sheet of paper, Boutique Builds provides resolved architectural retreat designs that can become the starting point for accommodation on rural and regional properties.
They are not tiny homes. They are not cabins on wheels, nor are they project homes disguised as boutique accommodation.
They are deliberately small pieces of architecture designed around orientation, views, privacy, light and landscape. I also believe strongly in this model because I have experienced it myself.
Our own boutique retreat in the Hunter Valley sits on approximately 100 acres at the foothills of the Wollemi National Park. At the centre of the property was a small circa-1903 timber cottage. We chose to restore it rather than demolish it because the history of that little building was inseparable from the character of the land surrounding it.
We didn't purchase the property because we wanted to create a tourism business. We purchased it because of how the place made us feel.
It had silence. Privacy. Wildlife. Landscape. History. And most importantly, space. Today, those are precisely the qualities our guests come to experience.
The cottage provides comfort and shelter, but ultimately it is the surrounding landscape that people remember. They open the doors. They walk through the property. They watch wildlife. They sit outside without seeing another person.
The building provides the accommodation. The land provides the luxury.
And that small retreat has created a secondary income from a property we already owned.
This is why I become excited when I drive further west through the Hunter and Upper Hunter and see magnificent agricultural properties stretching towards the horizon. There is enormous potential sitting within these landscapes.For agricultural businesses, particularly those exposed to seasonal conditions, drought and fluctuating commodity markets, tourism has the potential to create another layer of income without requiring the property to abandon its agricultural purpose.
A horse stud can remain a horse stud.
A vineyard can remain a vineyard.
A cattle property can continue producing cattle.
An olive grove can continue producing olives.
But perhaps somewhere within that landscape sits one exceptional small building where somebody from Sydney, Melbourne or overseas can spend three nights experiencing a completely different way of living.
They may simply be looking for space.
And increasingly, space is becoming a luxury commodity.
This changes the way we should think about development on rural land. Instead of asking, How many rooms can we put here? perhaps the more interesting question is, how few buildings do we need to create an extraordinary experience? That is a very different development philosophy.
It places greater importance on architecture, orientation and site selection. If you are only building two or three accommodation modules across hundreds of acres, each one needs to earn its position within the landscape. The window matters. The morning light matters. The direction of the breeze matters. The view from the bed matters. Small architecture has nowhere to hide. And that is precisely why it can be so powerful.
The opportunity for regional Australia is not to replicate the large resort model in the countryside. Our advantage is something completely different.
We already have the space. We already have the landscape.
We already have the agricultural stories, the food production, the vineyards, the horses, the livestock, the national parks and the extraordinary people who understand these places.
Perhaps we simply need to provide better ways for visitors to experience them.
If I had unlimited development capital tomorrow, I know exactly what I would do. I would build a very small collection of beautifully designed retreats in the Upper Hunter Valley—one of NSW's most remarkable landscapes and the beginning of an extraordinary agricultural and food-producing region.
I wouldn't build a large resort, I would build very little.
Because perhaps the future of luxury regional hospitality isn't about how much architecture we can place on the land.
It is about how little architecture we need to unlock the value of what is already there.
The land is the amenity.
And sometimes, emptiness is the luxury.
Christine McKanna-Farr
Founder, Boutique Builds
