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Australian hotel industry mourns passing of Hugh McCarron
Australian News.Net
Friday 2nd October, 2009
It was the 1950s when Hugh McCarron decided to build Australia’s first motel.
The setting was Orange in the New South Wales Central West. McCarron and his partner Mal Middleton, with the support of local investors, constructed what was then known as the Belair, a driveway hotel which was labelled a motel. It still stands today and is known as the Mid City Motor Lodge.
McCarron and Middleton were heavily into the travel industry at the time, having opened a travel agency in Orange, and set up a bus service between Orange and Bathurst which was packaged up with local airline East West to transport people to and from Orange to Sydney via Bathurst, with the Bathurst leg being a bus operated by McCarron and Middleton. Middleton co-incidently turned 100 earlier this month.
Hugh McCarron went on to develop motels throughout regional Australia, the next two being in in Parkes and Nyngan, before graduating to high rise hotels in the capital cities. He established the first Ramada Hotel at Crows Nest in Sydney. Ramada was having difficulties in those days and decided to pull out of Australia. The entrepreneurial McCarron simply reversed the first two letters of the name on his gigantic sign on the roof, and re-painted the letters blue - so the Ramada overnight became the Armada.
He later established the Rodeway hotel brand in Australia under the name Rodeway Pacific with hotels planned up and down the eastern seaboard, the first of which opened in Cairns. The 1989 pilots dispute and the property crash of 1989/90 however intervened.
During his time in the hotel industry Hugh McCarron was instrumental in the formation and running of co-operatives such as the MFA, or Motel Federation of Australia, which later became Homestead and finally was absorbed by the global hotel and motel conglomerate Best Western. He was also involved at various stages with Flag Inns, Golden Chain, and Zebra Hotels & Motels.
McCarron and his wife Dianne retired in recent years and relocated to the Central Coast. Hugh McCarron contracted cancer which he battled for some years before passing away last week. He is survived by Dianne and their children.  Email this story to a friend
Comments on this story
Anonymous
10-05-09, 07:21 PM |
Hugh McCarron pioneer of Australian motels passes away
Hugh was a significant figure in Orange along with his brother Ken who still lives in Orange and was a successful Stock and Station agent in the town until recently. Hugh published a book on the family history in 1988 for which the authors and the family are extremely grateful.
Ken J McCarron
(second cousin)
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