The resort will include an 88-bedroom hotel spread over four lodges as well as 13 two-bedroom villas and five one-bedroom villas.

The hotel will be connected by a tunnel to a restaurant with sweeping views across the bay and will also include a spa, gallery and underground car park.

Australian Tourism Trust is behind the project on Blowhole Road, and is one of up to seven developments it has in the pipeline for the rest of the state including two on the Great Ocean Road.

A planning application is before Glenelg Shire Council but no date has been set for a decision to be made with the shire awaiting further information from the applicant.

The development has so far attracted 27 submissions from 24 parties, the council said, but not all were objections but it could not specify how many were in support or opposed to the project.

The project has attracted support from the Portland tourist association, an adjoining landholder and the Bridgewater Cafe owner.

But there has also been opposition from some of the town's 80 residents who have formed a new group called Save Cape Bridgewater Association which has 130 members and is made up of some locals, Portland residents and others from further afield.

Portland and District Tourism Association president Dennis Carr, who also manages Cape Bridgewater Seaview Lodge Bed and Breakfast just down the road from where the new resort will be built, said most people in the town supported the project.

"I would be thinking out of 80 people at least 50 per cent would be in favour of it," Mr Carr said.

"This is unique. It's in a class of its own."

Mr Carr said the resort would support his own tourism operation.

"This is a five or six-star massive resort. There's nothing like this in Victoria. Probably the only thing like this was on King Island that got burnt down," he said.

"It's not a hotel, it's a resort. It is flash.

"When you come into Cape Bridgewater you will see a bit of it but it doesn't go any higher than the ridge."

Mr Carr said the developer behind the project was a south-west local who was trying to put something back into the area.

He said the developers were hoping to draw about 40 per cent of guests from overseas - the UK, US and China - and the rest from Australia.

The buildings had been designed around the region's indigenous history and culture with the villas designed to represent fish traps from the nearby world heritage-listed Budj Bim site.

"It's a fantastic concept. It's low level," Mr Carr said.

He said objections to the project based on the claim it was "hindering the land" didn't hold up because windfarms had already done that.

"These people complaining about this beautiful lodge staining the view, well views have been stained for a quite a few years by these windfarms," he said.

Mr Carr said the developers behind the project had about $1 billion worth of resort projects on the drawing board with others planned for the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians.

He said there was a Loch Ard-themed resort planned for near Port Campbell, another near Moonlight Head and others at Halls Gap, near Ballarat and Woodend.

Objector and Cape Bridgewater resident Patrick O'Brien said there were more than 130 members of the newly formed Save Cape Bridgewater Association who opposed the development.

He said the group was made up of local residents as well as those from across the region, Portland and further afield.

Mr O'Brien said they had made individual objections and one on behalf of the association.

He said they had written to politicians including South West Coast MP Roma Britnell, Member for Western Victoria Gayle Tierney, Wannon MP Dan Tehan and a number of letters to the state Planning Minister Richard Wynne and his Liberal party counterpart.

He said they had also written to each Glenelg Shire councillor.

Mr O'Brien said the group was hoping the council would undertake consultation with the local community.

"We have no objection to tourism development, we have significant objection to the size of this development and the impact it's going to have," he said.

Mr O'Brien said the development was out of step with the council's own structure plan - a guide for the tourism development in the area - which supported low-key, low impact tourism development of a small or modest scale.

"This 238-bed very large hotel isn't low key, modest or of a low scale," he said.

"It's completely disproportionate to the 80-odd people who live in and around Cape Bridgewater on a permanent basis," he said.

"We think it's just completely disproportionate from a size point of view with regard to the number of guests they're proposing to cater for.

"It's just completely over the top and the scale is just inconsistent with not only the existing size of the settlement but the nature of the development that has occurred around here which is low scale and spread out."

Mr O'Brien said the area's coastal landscape was the second most significant in Victoria behind the 12 Apostles and the Great Ocean Road.

"This thing is just going to be a blot on the landscape as far as we're concerned," he said.

"You can imagine these buildings taking up 160 metres of the 209-metre frontage on to Bridgewater Bay."

Mr O'Brien also raised concerns about the economic and financial rationale behind the project.

He questioned promises the project would inject $60 million annually into the economy, and said there were still questions to be answered around why the touted 245 staff would need purpose-built accommodation in Portland.

Mr O'Brien said there was only a small number of people that were supporting the project.

Cape Bridgewater cafe owner Scott Martin said there was nothing like the five to six-star resort anywhere in the area, let alone the rest of the state.

"It's high end. You're looking at about $400 to $500 a night. That tells you the sort of clientele they're going to have," Mr Martin said.

He said the resort wouldn't compete too much with his business but would bring more attention to the area.

"Bridgewater is the most unpublished, unrealised asset of Victoria with regards to its coastline and its beauty," Mr Martin said.

He said with fears the Portland smelter could close, projects like this one would be a boost to jobs and the region's economy.

He said while the resort would be visible, it ticked the box for being the "least intrusive as you possible can".

"We've got the opportunity to really have a say how we want it to be developed and the proposal they've put forward I think really protects the view," he said.

He said the developers had plans to tie it in with the local economy and there was talk of Tafe running courses tailored to the industry.

However, he said he understood why those who were against it were opposed to the development.

The new resort is located near the Cape Bridgewater Coastal Camp which runs as a school camp throughout the year and operates as a camping ground when it's not.

Adjoining landowner Douglass Cahill said he and two other adjoining landowners were fully supportive of the project.

"Judging by their design work, and I've been a solicitor for 43 years and I've seen many projects in my time, this is one of the more impressive ones I've set eyes on," he said.

Mr Cahill also has land with wind turbines on them and said the wind towers had "far more visual impact than this underground high-class development".

"A lot of it's underground, minimum visual impact," he said.

He said they had done a "damned good job" of blending in with the environment. "We have no issues with it."

Mr Cahill said the $85 million that the project would inject into the local economy in the post-virus climate would be "absolutely necessary".

"The council's well aware there is a large group of Cape Bridgewater people who fully support the project."

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